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I saw something a couple months back, that I can’t get out of my head. It’s something that reminded me of how – too often – we get distracted by the “new and shiny,” forgetting work of skill, craft, and meaning. But, I’ll get back to what that thing was in a moment…

I see this a lot with writers and other creative entrepreneurs: how new apps, social media, systems, buttons, marketing tactics, etc – seem to make us feel:

• Clever when we find it; cutting edge when we share it.
• Hopeful that there is an easier path – a shortcut – to success.
• Relevant and contemporary by knowing about this new thing.
• Validated. (ooohh, this is a biggie)

And in our everyday lives, this plays out in a variety of ways, writ large via social media: Tweets, links, giveaways, blogs, videos, lists, podcasts, etc. And endless list of “Have you heard about this amazing new trick?! Click here!”

I get less excited by this stuff for a lot of reasons. Perhaps primarily because I have found that the stuff that really works – the foundational ways the people learn about things, feel connected to them, and take action – works really well, but are difficult to master. And yet, in learning THIS craft – how to better communicate, how to better identify and understand your audience, how to better connect with others in a way that is meaningful, not promotional – something more interesting is created.

Okay, back to the beginning of this post. What was the thing that I saw that reminded me of all of this? A 75 year old dance number from a movie that astounded me, the Nicholas brothers from the 1943 film Stormy Weather:

About half-way through the video, just when you think “wow, this is pretty impressive, I’ve seen enough,” they duo raises the stakes. It’s worth watching the entire three minutes.

Fred Astair reportedly said that this was the finest piece of tap dancing ever filmed.

When I looked up the Nicholas brothers, it was neat to learn that each of them lived to see the turn of the century. I found this documentary on them that includes interviews with both brothers.

I suppose my concern over the “new and shiny” is about two things; The first is overlooking the amazing culture and accomplishments from our past. For instance, how many of these top rated documentaries have you heard of? I knew of surprisingly few of them. There are decades worth of top documentaries waiting for me to discover them.

The second thing is that the term that I hear most often from writers is: “OVERWHELMED.”

They are, plainly put: overwhelmed by trying to balance their regular lives, crafting their books & stories, the publishing process, and the desire/pressure to ensure it reaches readers. And, like all click-able headlines (“10 amazing ways to use Pinterest to launch your book!”) this tends to encourage the behavior of looking for shortcuts and new and shiny ways of doing more with less effort.

And I can’t blame them for wanting this type of thing. But I think that shortcuts of the new and shiny remove the wisdom of the journey. That there is something important to be experienced when you explore goal setting that leads to action; small steps that build momentum; hone and test messaging which leads to true engagement with readers; establish a proper strategy and communication channels that WORK, instead of just juggling a million social networks.

That, for all the shortcuts and new and shiny things that distract us everyday, there is something lost – perhaps a lack of diversity of efforts & experience when we all look for the same mindless best practices.

I watched a documentary this week, Finding Vivian Maier, of a woman who spent a lifetime taking incredible photographs, but never shared them with anyone. They were found after she passed away, and the story of who she was and what she saw is as intriguing as the photographs themselves.

In the context of this post though, what I love is that we are discovering an artist who focused on the basics – deeply communicative photographs of the human experience. And the fact that we discover her decades after she created most of her work, simply underscores that value is found not just in things that are new, things that are shiny, but things that are universal, well-crafted, and timeless.

Do you find yourself overwhelmed? How do you keep yourself motivated to focus on the foundations, not the new & shiny?

Thank you.
-Dan

I was really surprised by the incredible response to last week’s message – so many people reached out to me with their thoughts and challenges in terms of connecting with their audience via email newsletters.

I have been developing an email newsletter online course for awhile, but last week’s response made me think: “Dan, you have to launch this course NOW.” So my team and I tied up a lot of loose ends this week, and are thrilled to announce a 4-week online course to round out the summer: Launch Your Email Newsletter.

The bottom line: if you have been considering launching an email newsletter, join me from August 11 – Sept 5 to get it done.

The course consists of four weekly PDF lessons, as well as access to a private Facebook Group where you can ask me anything, we can work through challenges, brainstorm ideas, and you get the benefit of learning from other writers in the course as well.

The cost for everything $99. More information, and sign up is here.

As I have said before, so much about developing and engaging an audience for your work is about two things: communication and trust. And I have found email to be a primary way to establish both between writers and their readers. This is based on my own experience working with hundreds of authors, and from interview after interview with bestselling authors.

Of course, for those of you who have no interest or need for this type of thing: THANK YOU for your continued support!
Thanks.
-Dan

My most recent post for the good folks at WriterUnboxed.com explores the value of email to develop a meaningful connection with your audience. A few key points:

1. Obsess over the “least crowded channels” to reach your ideal audience.
2. Give your fans the OPTION to engage more deeply. Too many people close these doors under false assumptions.
3. Email sells. From a pure business perspective – this is not something that should be ignored.
4. How my career was shaped by my email newsletter.
5. A few basic recommendations to get started.

You can read the entire post here. And of course, you can sign up for my email newsletter here!
🙂

Thanks.
-Dan

This is exactly how I feel about so many of the “best practices” for social media that I hear about; they have the right intention, but something goes awry:

What you see here is a robot doing EXACTLY as it was programmed to do. And yet, something is lost in translation. Is the garbage can picked up? Yes. Is the man being fed the Frito? Yes. Is ketchup being applied to the burger? Yes.

Can you imagine a world in which everything operated as these robots do – where they are following “best practices,” but with one tiny diverging mistake?

What is missing here? I suppose it could be described in a lot of ways: caring, nuance, grace, elegance.

Best Practices Are Boring

So much of my career seems to be people seeking “best practices.” And I TOTALLY understand that request – they want a bit of a shortcut so that they find new opportunity and growth. And of course, when you STUDY (and obsess) about things as I do, you notice trends, you read research, and you come to understand “what is normal and expected” for various aspects of sharing your work and growing an audience.

But…

For a few years now, I have increasingly been feeling that: BEST PRACTICES ARE BORING. No, I am not saying they are useless, but my sense of jadedness around best practices could come down to:

• Shortcuts such as “best practices” don’t allow you the wisdom that comes in the journey of finding out for yourself.
• The realization that there is no “one path” that is somehow better optimized than others. EG: you can have a successful email that is sent out on ANY day of the week, not just Tuesdays at 11am ET. (which is one of many “best practice” days/times I have heard over the years)
• By the time something becomes a known “best practice,” everyone is doing it. The value you hear about is often merely 20% of what it was originally.
• The web is littered with “a case study of one,” meaning that every time a single person does something that works, I sometimes see articles written as if THIS WILL WORK FOR EVERYONE. So writers and creative professionals are inundated with “best practices,” many of which only worked once, for one person.
• I would like MORE creative, MORE meaningful stuff in the world, and if we all just try to replicate some “best practice” with the justification of “I’m too busy to try out new things,” then we miss out on wonderful opportunities to create and learn. I was chatting with a friend the other day about “Amazon and publishing,” and we were reflecting on how much some booksellers and some publishers essentially ceded retail to Amazon. Amazon was a shortcut – a best practice. So these publishers, booksellers, and even authors gave up the opportunity to develop their own path to reach readers and sell books. Suddenly, when Amazon flexes it’s very large muscles, some of these booksellers, publishers, and authors are now exploring their own unique ways to reach readers and sell books. They are having to become VERY inventive in the process, but there is clearly so much value in this exercise. Is there also expenditure of resources, uncertain ROI, and very real casualties along the way? YES, I won’t pretend this process is simple and pretty. But it stretches us to not just rely on “the elephant in the room” that we are all scared of, simply because it is easier.

Do I teach best practices to writers? Of course I do. But I also push them to find out for themselves, what feels right for THEM and for THEIR readers. And this is where those moments of serendipity and magic can happen.

We Are Talking More, and Being Heard Less

My gut is that you have heard that what you share on Facebook is not seen by everyone you are ‘friends’ with or everyone who has ‘liked’ your Page. But it turns out the same thing is true for Twitter: these networks control what is seen and when, and we really don’t have a clear picture of how that happens.

Can you imagine having a deep conversation with a friend over coffee, and 30% of the sentences you say and hear are removed?

So many of people seem to feel the pressure to find “efficiencies” in communication by broadcasting out dozens of messages per day on social media with the hopes that they reach as many people as possible. We don’t like to say it out loud, but our hope is that social media works like really effective advertising… we hope it magically delivers an large and engaged audience.

I’ve become less a fan of that, probably because I feel that TRUE engagement is built one relationship at a time. This is why in workshop presentations, I always point to successful authors who also engage one-on-one with others via @replies on Twitter. Folks such as Neil Gaiman or Susan Orlean.

An interesting example of this from outside the writing world is tech entrepreneur & investor Marc Andreessen. This article explores his very recent activity on Twitter as he just began using the service six months ago. Some of the article’s conclusions:

“During the first six months of 2014, Andreessen tweeted 21,783 times—more than any of Twitter’s founders have posted since its creation, and an average of five tweets per hour, every hour.”

“Andreessen is remarkably personable on Twitter. Almost 13,000 of his tweets—about 60%—are “replies” to other Twitter users.”

“You’d think that Andreessen has more important work to do for his day job than tweeting every few minutes. (A colleague confirms that it’s Marc doing the tweeting—not a social-media assistant or intern.) But Andreessen says it’s actually very important in his profession today to have a big Twitter following: “It’s a great way to explain what we’re doing, how we think about things, and to respond to issues and questions.” He adds, with a smiley-face emoticon, a secondary, personal reason: “I love arguing.”

I’m not really interested in a rehashing of “why Twitter is valuable” here, but I do love seeing examples of what this looks like in the life of one very busy person. That to realize the value we know social media has is more about engaging directly with individuals in ways that are meaningful, not finding more and more clever ways to trick people to “follow” you.

Quantity Matters Less Than Quality of Connection

Earlier this year I shared a post on how I am changing how I use social media. I have focused my activity to places I am TRULY engaged everyday, which is mostly: Facebook (Profile, Group, and Page), Instagram and Twitter. And Twitter is the place that I have most dramatically shifted my efforts, Tweeting much less, and trying to listen more, and understand how I can make this network feel more personal.

I am noticing little things in this process. For instance, I asked this question on two places: “Writers: Do you have an email newsletter? If so, please share the link with me.” The result:

• On Twitter, where I have nearly 7,000 followers, many of whom are writers, I received one response.
• On a private Facebook Group that I manage, which has 148 members, I received 13 links to author newsletters, plus other conversation in the mix.

The difference in response rate is astounding, and speaks to the reason that some of the authors in the private Facebook Group have said that they enjoy it – it feels like a supportive safe space to engage and seek advice. And something about that makes them dramatically more willing to share, I suppose.

Social Media Can Actually Feel MORE Personal and Meaningful, Especially for Introverts

Julia Fierro recently shared a lovely article about her experience in being an introvert, one-time agoraphobe, and yet, enjoying social media, and LOVING the people she connects with there. I highly recommend reading the entire post: “Social media saved me from my fears: How Facebook brought me back into the real world,” but here is a brief excerpt:

“Some days I receive a message from one of my online friends — a person I may never meet in person — most often through Facebook or Twitter. Many of these messages come from people, like me, who live, for one reason or another, in a bit of a bubble. They might be stay-at-home parents who spend most days in a house with two nonverbal children; or people confined to their home by a disability, or because they are recovering from trauma; they might live in a town where they haven’t met many writers or like-minded people; or they might be like me — — a little agoraphobic, a lot anxious, a homebody, an introvert who prefers reading about adventures to exotic places.”

“When critics call our “connected” online culture a farce, claiming it breeds loneliness instead of community, I inwardly scoff, but I still “like” their articles — in sympathy mostly, wishing they could feel the authentic joy I feel each time I log on to Facebook.”

“I feel genuinely close to my online friends, but I can slip into a conversation, and slip out. I can log on, and log off. And, in my busy midlife years, when I am “having it all” — balancing professional success, a writing life and family — these are the only relationships I have time for.”

As I have stated in earlier posts, I do not think there is one right way to use social media. I never liked that phrase “you’re doing it wrong,” because I think everyone should use social media in whichever way they feel most comfortable.

I simply speak to so many people who feel pressure – and I feel this pressure as well – to constantly optimize social media to be more about advertising, and less about true human interactions.

Do you feel pressure to do more, or do certain things in social media? Please share below.

Thanks!
-Dan

Related post:Attack of the social media zombies

(the robots gone mad gifs above were found via Jason Kottke)

For so many writers and creative professionals, a key challenge they face is feeling stretched beyond their limits: maxed out on time and energy. This leads to a sense of frustration, and begins to encourage them to OVERLOOK opportunities because they are just “trying to get by” with an already burdensome workload.

And worse: their art suffers. They spend less time CREATING, and more time MANAGING all the ‘stuff’ that is supposed to be in service of the art. Let’s face it: that sucks. My biggest goals for my clients are simple:

1. I want them to have MORE time & creative energy to write and develop their craft.
2. I want their work to not only reach an audience, but have a meaningful effect on their lives.

So what gets in the way of these things? I remember hearing an interview on Mixergy.com once where someone talked about how, when launching a business, they were so busy protecting themselves from failure, that they forgot to prepare for success. The person told a story of how, when things began going well, that he couldn’t react quickly enough to the opportunity and growth because he didn’t have systems in place to do so. He hit maximum capacity too quickly.

I can understand why people ‘prepare for failure’ in order to mitigate risk and protect their personal and professional lives. The thinking here is often “If things work out, I’ll gladly figure out how to take advantage of it if that really does happen – what a wonderful “problem” to have!”

So what is wrong with this? They are not prepared to take advantage of opportunities when those rare serendipitous moments do arrive.

I have been thinking about this in terms of the writers I work with, and for how I can provide more value to them. I have been obsessing about PREPARING FOR SUCCESS. Let’s explore three ways I digging into this right now:

1. Getting help
2. Recording and optimizing systems
3. Integrating tools into daily work processes

This is all about allowing you to grow beyond your own personal capacity. I am integrating these three things into my company right now, but before I do that, I want to give you examples of how an individual writer could consider value in each:

1. Getting Help: you can’t do it all, and let’s face it, publishing is a process of partnerships. I have written in the past in terms of one client: Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, which outlines the many partners in her work. As she moves forward for her next book, she is taking a step further, exploring the idea of hiring an assistant or intern to be there with her on a weekly basis. In other words, as her writing career grows, she is considering how she can grow with it.
2. Recording and optimizing systems: We all do things a certain way, and often feel that we are so busy, that we don’t have time to write down a guide to how we do what we do. But how can a writer effectively partner with editors, publishers, cover designers, publicists, booksellers, readers, and so many others in the process when they can’t effectively communicate their process, their timeline, and how everything fits together.

   What I find is that without this ability to communicate process and timeline, life becomes a series of just dealing with the next catastrophe. Sometimes people call this “putting out fires,” and it always confused me because I wondered what it meant that things in your life are always on fire. Wouldn’t it be awesome to live life on a day to day basis without things on fire? To just, you know, ENJOY life while still moving forward with an ambitious writing career? That is the problem we are tackling here.

3. Integrating tools into daily work processes: when I work with an author on a book launch, there are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of potential actions we can take. Likewise, for the author themselves, they are managing even more: the process of writing and publishing, in addition to developing a readership for their book. Oftentimes, they collect bookmarks of blog posts filled with ideas, and they lose sleep trying to remember things to do. Their life begins to feel like an unorganized mess, and they can easily become jaded on so many aspects of what it means to publish – to SHARE your work with readers.

   In this case, a system can help them select which actions to take, and which to let go; keep track of all the moving parts; record what they did, what worked, and what didn’t so that they can reuse the best processes for the NEXT book launch; integrate the various partners into their process. That is a big part of what I provide authors I work with, but I am finding there are ways to improve these processes.

Let’s dig into how each of these things are playing out for my own work:

Getting Help

As an entrepreneur who runs his own company, everything I do is driven by enthusiasm. I love what I do and who I work with, so it is easy to build a business based on my own personal enthusiasm alone.

For years, I have resisted hiring employees, and integrating them into my daily work processes because I thought I could never slow down enough to integrate them. I’m changing that, and to be honest, I should have done this a long time ago. I have recently hired three interns to help me frame how this goes from a company of one, to something that allows me to grow beyond my personal capacity – not in terms of quantity of how many people hire me, but in terms of the QUALITY of what I can provide to each individual.

This is akin to what many of my own clients do – they get to a point where they say: “boy, this would be so much more fun and powerful if I wasn’t doing all of this alone.”

In the first month alone, each of the interns have helped me move forward, and have been an absolute joy to work with. A basic description of what we have been doing so far:

• Diane Krause: has been getting systems setup, with a primary focus on my consulting work.
• Kathi Gadow: has been doing the initial research for an event I am planning.
• Rachel Burns: has been helping develop a new online course I will be running later this year.

It’s incredible to know that each of these projects are being moved forward every week by Diane, Kathi, and Rachel, and their skills and creative input has been not only increasing the quality of each project, but it has simply been more FUN for me.

I’m not going to lie, ENJOYING the journey is important.

Recording and Optimizing Systems

WeGrowMedia is four years old now, and my daily life is filled with critical work processes that I have never written down. Each day, I sort of make up the same process again and again. This means I am wasting creative energy that should be put elsewhere.

That is now changing. Why? A few reasons:

• Writing down systems and checklists for common situations allows me to integrate others (see above), and create a workflow that can scale (see below.)
• Less of my mindspace is filled trying to remember things or rewrite the same thing over and over. So one thing we are doing is creating some scripts based off of notes I have written again and again (and again), always from memory.
• I am finding opportunities in the details. So as Diane and I write down each step of onboarding a new client, we are finding gaps that need to be filled, and more importantly: new ways to add value in the process.

A simple example of this: how I communicate with a client between the time that we sign an agreement and work begins. That timeframe differs for each client, but already we are standardizing the timeliness of messages in order to better set expectations. This means that there is less confusion, and that on day one, I can make an even more powerful difference. It also allows us to consider prompts such as: “How can I ‘wow’ a client even before we have our very first meeting?”

None of this is rocket science. So much of success is about communication and trust, and key outputs from this process are asking better questions and sending better email. And yet, there is SO MUCH opportunity to be found here.

Integrating Tools Into Daily Work Processes

I am integrating nearly every single one of my clients into a full-on project management tool, allowing us to create efficiencies that does three things:

1. Give them more time to write because the rest of the ‘stuff’ is so organized.
2. Better manage the many actions we are taking – prioritizing, assigning, aligning to a timeline.
3. Reduce stress and anxiety in the process. It’s hard to overstate how important this is, and how it frees up parts of your brain and emotions which leads to… (you guessed it)… more time and energy to WRITE.

While this is a huge shift – moving my daily workflow and clients into a system like this – I am already seeing incredible benefits for my clients.

I will admit that I held a lot of resistance to implementing a system like this. Maybe I was just concerned that it seemed less human. What I am finding is that it is an enormous stress reliever for all involved. And you know what, it simply FEELS more professional.

It also offers unforeseen benefits. For example, with one author I am working with, our using the project management software allows their publisher to keep track of what we are working on more efficiently – they can just check into the project management system and take a glance. So much of success is about communication, and I’m finding that this system is already increasing the quality of how this happens for clients and partners.

Another system I have been integrating for awhile now (more than a year) is what would traditionally be called “customer relationship management,” or a CRM system. At the most basic level, this is an address book. And even if we stopped right there, that is enough. How often have you had a friend post to Facebook: “I lost my phone, can each of you resend me your contact info?!”

But clearly it’s more: it helps me better communicate with clients, partners, colleagues and friends. For the pure business stuff, I have a much clearer view of the most important part of my work: the PEOPLE.

For writers and creative professionals, so much of success is about relationships. And I’m finding that taking a CRM system seriously creates more potential opportunity in how their work spreads.

All of this is about building better habits. Focusing on quality, not quantity. I find that a lot of people who run a small business as I do, feel that ‘growth’ is only about getting more clients, growing their email list, and becoming “bigger.” More more more.

While that is nice, most of my focus has been on increasing the QUALITY of my work, and how I can deliver even more value to my existing clients. And yes, I am aware that if I become better at what I do, if I PREPARE FOR SUCCESS, that it would hopefully mean that I not only have even more clients in the future, but that I am better able to provide value with the resources I have put into place.

Even though so much of what I talk about above is about “systems,” this is all an inherently HUMAN process. For the work I do, the writers I work with are often pushing themselves past very personal boundaries. My goal is to help them reduce fear, better manage stress, and take confusion out of the process.

I want to be an even better partner for the writers I work with. The goals stated above are worth repeating here… I endeavor to provide two things:

1. I want them to have MORE time & creative energy to write and develop their craft.
2. I want their work to not only reach an audience, but have a meaningful effect on their lives.

I want to increase capacity, without increasing stress. To have systems in place to efficiently take care of the little stuff, so that it frees up creative capacity (time and energy) for authors to do what matters most: WRITE.

Have you looked into integrating systems such as this? What benefits and challenges have you found?

Thanks!
-Dan