Each week on his show, Bob painted a mesmerizing landscape in just half an hour. He was known for his soft-spoken style, his signature permed hair, and his uncanny ability to make you believe that just like him, you could paint a masterpiece.

Most of Bob’s viewers didn’t know that he meticulously planned out his paintings in advance. He would create the original, memorize every brushstroke, then paint the scene a second time during the taping of the show.

Every once in a while, Bob would make a tiny mistake and then repeat his signature phrase, “We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents.” Then, he would either paint over the mistake or find a way to blend it into the scene.

There is a good lesson here not only for painters, but for writers as well. We like to beat ourselves up for mistakes. We are disappointed when we mess up or don’t perform perfectly.

But remember, you’re human. You’re imperfect. You won’t get it right every time.

There are times when you will flat-out bomb. That book, that blog post, that article, that lesson or speech won’t go as planned. In those moments, the last thing you want to do is celebrate your mistakes.

But what if you did this instead: rather than painting over those flaws and imperfections, you accepted them as a part of the picture? And not only accepted them… but celebrated them?

It doesn’t mean you should compromise your standards. You can still reach for excellence while also accepting your humanity. Those happy little accidents, if you learn from them, can be the pathway to a life that is more beautiful and scenic than all the perfect paintings in the world.

Today’s Challenge: What is the last mistake you made? What if, instead of trying to cover it up, you accepted it as part of your picture and used it as a learning experience?

The post Happy Little Accidents appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

That’s a great strategy for getting good grades. However, the skills that help you become a 4.0 student in school actually work against you in life. Here are three reasons why.

First, 4.0 students are great at following rules. You can only get perfect grades when you do exactly what the teacher says. This is only valuable if the teacher knows what they’re doing or is teaching you something that’s relevant in the real world.

Second, 4.0 students have picked up the unfortunate habit of living for the validation and applause of others. They feel like losers unless they get recognition from teachers, peers, Academic Deans, or a scholarship committee.

Third, 4.0 students love competition. The whole idea of a GPA and Dean’s List is to rank people based on their performance. This inflates the ego of the students who have obsessed over their grades, and unfairly punishes students who aren’t wired to learn in a traditional classroom setting.

I enjoyed my years as a college professor, but I also saw firsthand the shortcomings of traditional school. Let’s be honest: the academic system is designed to reward students who enjoy school.

4.0 students may get all the scholarships, awards, and academic recognition from their teachers. But those skills are not so valuable in the real world.

To become a successful writer and business person, you need to think for yourself, be willing to break the rules when needed (or, just create your own!), validate your own success, and seek out collaboration opportunities with great people.

Those skills might lead to failure in the classroom, but they’re exactly what you need to become a 4.0 student in the school of life.

Today’s Challenge: Let’s put what you’ve learned here into practice. Think about another author your respect in your social circle. Shoot them a text or email today asking if you can have a quick chat about some ways you can collaborate.

The post The Curse of 4.0 appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

Why? Because I knew it was a lot of work to put together a great live event. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to invest the time or energy to host a retreat when I felt there were so many other important things to do. Client work, my podcast, my own writing, and the endless administrative details necessary to run a business all require my attention. Hosting a retreat for a select few people was pretty far down that list.

However, I’ve been to a lot of retreats and other small events in the last couple of years. I knew the incredible power a retreat or live event can have to impact people’s lives. There is magic when people come together in person—a magic that you simply can’t duplicate online.

Despite my best intentions to put off a retreat until next year or beyond, I decided to go ahead and give it a shot. Several of our Daily Writer Club members had been asking about a retreat, so I knew it was something they wanted to do.

We made plans to have a smaller retreat of ten people. I had a lot of help planning the event, and we decided on the following schedule:

On Tuesday evening, we met at a great BBQ restaurant for dinner.

On Wednesday, I kicked off the day by having everyone share what a successful retreat looked like for them. In other words, what did they most want to get out of our time together? This was helpful for me to know so I could adjust as needed in order for everyone to get the most value out of it. We spent the rest of the day in two small groups, helping everyone get clear on their business goals.

On Thursday, we had a similar schedule, except that we focused on how to write a short book. I’m a big proponent of crafting short books, especially if you’re a first-time author. I did a teaching session on three ways to organize a short book, then we spent the rest of the day in two small groups working on their book concepts, outline, and their next steps for writing and publishing.

Now that you have a basic idea of how we structured this retreat, I’ll share the ten most important lessons I’m taking away from this experience.

1. People are hungry for live events.

After two years of dealing with COVID, people have been ready to get back to live events. Not everyone, of course—some people are still cautious, and everyone has to choose for themselves whether they want to attend live events.

Personally, I never stopped going to events. But it’s clear that people simply want to be together. This retreat showed me the power of getting together in person, particularly for writers who are often isolated.

2. Food and location make a big difference.

I splurged on a nice, large, historic home in St. Charles, Missouri. We were only a couple of blocks away from the historic Main Street, where there are dozens of quaint little shops and many coffee shops and restaurants. It’s also right next to the Missouri River.

Catering was provided by my friend Stephanie Hill, who owns the catering company Nibble & Nosh. The food and the home were a little more upscale, which set a tone that I wasn’t trying to get away with a budget retreat.

3. Introverted writers need a different type of retreat.

I designed this 2-day retreat as sort of a “retreat for introverted writers.” I’ve been to retreats before where people are going from the early morning until late at night, and it’s exhausting for introverts who need personal space and downtime.

So, we went into this retreat with the plan of having a long lunch break, and being finished around 3:00pm both days, with an afternoon break so people could take a walk or get coffee.

What I didn’t take into account, though, was that writers love to talk and talk when they’re around other writers. Even introverts open up a lot when they’re surrounded by others who “get them” and have similar goals and interests. We ended up not having much downtime because people wanted to talk!

4. The main value of a retreat is not information, it’s relationships.

As a result of being together, everyone there made new connections, expanded their goals, made a lot of progress on their book outline or project, or had some other type of breakthrough (myself included).

Everything is SO MUCH EASIER (and more fun) when you surround yourself with great people. A retreat is a great setting to build those relationships and collaborate with people.

5. You need help planning a great retreat.

I had a lot of help planning and running the Daily Writer retreat. My wife, Melanie, helped choose the venue and prep some of the food. Two of our Daily Writer Club members, M.J. James and Lynn Smargis, were a big help in planning the retreat and leading groups.

It’s not just about “having help” and offloading things you could do yourself. Having other people’s help and input actually multiplies the impact of the event. They bring ideas and energy you can’t bring yourself. I’m so grateful to these people for making it so much better than I could have done on my own.

6. A retreat or live event can have a powerful impact on someone’s business or life direction.

One of the people who came had been trying to build their ghostwriting business, but they have been stalled out for a while. However, in one of our group sessions, he discovered he had a real gift and love for editing. Now he is working with another editor in the group to build his editing business, which will be a quicker way to gain some income than ghostwriting.

This insight and a new direction for his business only happened because he attended the retreat. Being in a live setting with people who want to assist you can help you make radical progress in a short time.

In fact, it was a Total Life Freedom retreat where I was challenged to start the Daily Writer Club! I didn’t feel ready, yet I made the decision to do it two years ago in the context of a retreat.

7. A retreat is a great setting for people to look at the big picture.

At this retreat, we did a lot of book planning, but the most powerful question we talked about was “What do you really want from all this?”

We writers love books, but the book needs to be connected to your bigger goals. A lot of writers get stuck—not because they don’t have ideas, but because they’re not sure which idea to pursue. When you get clear about your goals and what you want, everything is a lot easier.

A retreat gives you the time and space to get away from the details of your business and life, and instead focus on the bigger picture.

8. People love swag!

We have all been to events where the organizers gave you merchandise that wasn’t high quality. I didn’t want to give away cheap pens or other items that weren’t first-class.

I went through VistaPrint and had high-quality tumblers, pens, notebooks, and stickers designed. They were not cheap, but they made a great impression. We put all of these items in gift bags for attendees.

Just a side note: when you are designing merchandise for your business, make sure it’s items people will actually use. Nobody wants another coffee mug. High-quality tumblers are a great option. I chose one with a white background so the green Daily Writer logo really stands out… especially when you’re using it on Zoom calls.

9. You’re never too old to chase your writing dreams.

We had several people in their 60’s or 70’s at the retreat. It was so fun and inspiring to see them taking action and making progress! Don’t ever think you’re too old (or too young) to try something new or take the next step.

10. The role of a retreat leader is not to be the guru, but a catalyst.

People in your group or community come to your retreat because they respect you and you have a certain breadth of knowledge they want to learn from. However, I don’t believe a retreat is the time to focus on the knowledge you have as a leader.

A retreat is not about gaining information. It’s about life change. And the best way life change happens is through conversations, application of knowledge, good questions, and discussion… all in a safe and welcoming environment.

The leader’s job is to be a catalyst and to make sure everyone is supported and included. This means having a high degree of emotional intelligence and social awareness. You need to be able to see when others aren’t participating and take steps to draw the best out of them.

Bonus lesson: Focus on adding value at a retreat, not making it highly profitable.

For this first retreat, my goal was not to make money. In fact, I planned on losing money. I wanted to get a good group together and have an awesome event. Therefore, I priced it really low and did everything I could to make it worthwhile.

I ended up losing money, but it wasn’t really a “loss.” I considered this an investment into my training as a retreat host. Events can be expensive, and my goal will never be to make this the most profitable part of my Daily Writer business. But it’s an important part because nothing can match the energy and relational value of a live event. You can’t replicate it any other way.

Those are my major takeaways from this retreat. I learned a lot and saw this as an opportunity for me to get my feet wet as a retreat leader. I suspect this will become a bigger part of my Daily Writer business as time goes on.

If you have ever considered leading a retreat for writers, I hope you’ll take these lessons to heart. And I certainly want to invite you to participate in our next Daily Writer Retreat, which is coming up at the end of February! More details to come…

The post 10 Lessons from Hosting the First Daily Writer Retreat appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

In the previous two entries in this series, we have taken a look at the destructive nature of jealousy, and why you should focus on what you can do to make yourself successful rather than spending your emotional energy being envious.

Let’s dive into three questions that will help you focus on attitudes and actions that will spur your writing success. We’ll tackle the first one here today. Also, notice that each one begins with “what.”

The first question is: What can I learn from this person?

When you think of another writer who is successful, and if you’re honest, you’re jealous of them, they have something you want. They might have better name recognition, more income, more people’s attention, or more of something else. I can easily tick off two dozen writers in my own orbit who fit this category.

When we’re jealous of someone, we begin to think of them in a negative light. At our worst, we wish they weren’t so successful. That’s why jealousy is so insidious and destructive. At its worst, jealousy is less about wanting someone’s success and more about wanting their failure.

We need to flip this scenario around. Instead of wanting to take away someone else’s success, we should figure out how we can get to their level. What people, books, habits, and experiences helped them be successful?

If they have a blog, subscribe to it. If they wrote a book, read it. If they have a Facebook group, join it. If they are on Twitter, ask them questions.

That person has done some things that can help you be more successful. So set aside your own ego for a moment and humbly ask, “What can I learn from this person?” It will change your own attitude and also help you focus on tangible activities that produce results for you.

Daily Question: Think of another writer more successful than you. What are three things they have done that you can start doing in your own writing or business as well?

The post What Can You Learn from a Successful Writer? appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

I’ve talked about this a few times here on the podcast before. But, just in case you haven’t heard, I left my teaching job at St. Louis Christian College this past summer in order to focus full-time on ghostwriting and running my Daily Writer membership community.

Now that SLCC has announced it will be merging with another school at the end of this school year, I have been reflecting a lot on what I learned as a professor during the previous 17 years.

One of the most important things I learned as a teacher is the value of assessment. “Assessment” is a broad term for a set of practices designed to help you see if you’re reaching your goals.

Most people in higher ed honestly hate assessment because it feels like a huge pain. It’s time-consuming and often feels like busy work. However, being in this world taught me the value of taking a detailed, honest look at how you can improve.

One of the most important skills we can develop is the ability to separate our personal identity from our work. If you always base your self-worth on what others think of you, you’ll be an emotional yo-yo. The big lesson for writers here is that we need to evaluate and assess our work with a critical eye. We also need other people’s help in doing so.

We get so emotionally tied to our work that we get defensive whenever someone criticizes our “baby.” But there is often a nugget of truth in people’s criticism, even if we don’t like the way they deliver it. The question is, can we set aside our ego long enough to listen? Is there something we can learn? Do we care about our work enough that we can see if there is any truth to the criticism?

In the entrepreneur community, there is a huge emphasis on “doing things my way” and sticking it to the critics and doubters. I totally get this, and this kind of attitude helps us move past obstacles and get things done. But there is also a dark side to this approach. When you push ahead at all costs and totally ignore the critics and doubters, it’s easy to become blind to your own shortcomings. That is why we all need to surround ourselves with people who give us feedback and hold us to a higher standard (It’s also why I created the Daily Writer Community).

When I was a professor, the college did a formal evaluation of one of my classes each semester. But I also did a separate assessment of every one of my classes, every semester. I asked students to answer a few questions to help me improve the class for next time. I learned three critical things from having students evaluate every class, every semester. I want to share these with you and apply them to our writing.

1.) The best ideas for improving a class almost always came from students.

For example, I used to teach a public speaking class. The way I taught this for years was to focus on doing two or three big speeches. We would work on these for weeks, and then they would deliver it in class. Each speech was a pretty decent chunk of their grade.

However, one comment I would often hear is, “We would like to have more practice speaking, instead of just doing two or three speeches.” Eventually, I completely changed the course so that students were doing shorter speeches, but a lot more of them. They had more fun, there was less pressure to make each speech awesome, and they got a lot more practice upfront.

If you are the one creating the content, either as a writer or teacher, it’s easy to think of yourself as the expert. You know more about your “thing” than anyone else, so why would you listen to someone else’s comments? But the truth is that we get blind to all the ways we can improve what we do. Oftentimes, it takes a beginner’s perspective to give us a fresh perspective.

So, make sure to listen to people who don’t know much about what you do. Your expertise might be blinding you to some obvious and simple ways to improve.

One little caveat here: students wouldn’t volunteer these ideas—I had to ask first. They weren’t going to go out of their way to give me ideas for improvement, which leads to the second lesson.

2.) I emphasized to students that I did not take any of their comments personally.

In fact, I WANTED them to tell me what to improve. I wanted them to know I was not emotionally attached to the class. My one and only concern was improving the student experience. This gave them the freedom to say what they really thought. Without that freedom, they would hold back and not tell the full truth.

This is a very hard lesson for writers. We love what we do. We put our heart and soul into it. It’s hard not to take things personally. But if we are approaching our work like professionals, we have to maintain some emotional distance from our work. We can’t get emotionally wrapped up in it. Our work is ultimately a product that is either working, or it isn’t. The question is, do you have the courage?

3.) I had to be willing to take the best ideas and actually change the class.

It was easy to do a survey and gather comments. But once I had the data, I had to be willing to put in the work to revise the class. If you have never taught a college course, this isn’t just a matter of changing a couple of things. When you do a substantial update to a course, it usually involves several things like changing textbooks, changing assignments, changing your teaching notes, figuring out how to best meet your learning objectives, adjusting how your gradebook is set up, and so much more.

Over the course of a semester-long class, this can mean over a hundred hours of work when all is said and done. You’ve probably had the experience as a student where you had a teacher or professor, and they were infamous for teaching a class the same way over many years. In fact, I remember taking a Bible history course in college, and I honestly don’t think the professor had changed the course in thirty years.

It is easy to make fun of this approach until you’re actually a professor who is faced with the gargantuan task of re-doing a whole course. I have done it many, many times and I sympathize with the impulse to leave a course alone and do it the same old way year after year, although ultimately that doesn’t serve you or the students very well.

This is where the rubber meets the road. Are we willing to put in the time and effort to create a better experience for our students and readers? Are we willing to not only listen to feedback and evaluation, but actually put it into practice?

I can tell you for sure that as a professor, I had a lot more fun when I listened to feedback and did the work to change a course and make it better. The students had a lot more fun as well. In fact, in my last few years of teaching, I completely changed my teaching style. I transitioned to a more “flipped classroom” approach where I did very little lecturing and talking, and we had a lot more learning activities, presentations, group work, case studies, and so forth.

And as I did that, I noticed something interesting… the more that students were involved, and the less that I lectured, the more they seemed to learn and have fun! There are some important lessons there not only for teachers, but for all of us who are writing, communicating, and trying to impact lives with our words and ideas.

The post 3 Quick Lessons on Evaluating Your Writing appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.

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It has been quite an eventful week at the Daily Writer. This past week, I did an official public launch of the Daily Writer Community. I know that I have mentioned it several times already here on the podcast, and I even did a full episode a couple of weeks ago sharing all about it.

But this past week was the first time I really put it out there on social media and shared it more widely than I ever have. On this episode, I wanted to dive into the behind the scenes of creating this group and what I have learned from it.

The Daily Writer Community is a membership program for writers. The purpose of the community is to help writers develop the habits and mindset to be more successful in their writing. It’s for writers of every kind, whether you do blogging, books, client work, screenwriting, sermons, copywriting, or anything else. This is a generous, positive, group of writers who inspire and encourage one another and take action toward their goals.

The group is intentionally small, and is capped at 100 people total. The idea is that we not growing huge in numbers, but we are growing deeper in our skills and community, and going higher and higher as we reach bigger goals. You can find out more about how to apply via this link.

Here are 5 surprising lessons I’ve learned from launching the Daily Writer Community:

1. Do your market research before you launch something.

This is a surprise because when you do your market research, you will learn things that are unexpected. Just to give you some context for how I created the daily writer community: I had an idea of what I wanted this group to be and the type of features I wanted to include. However, I also felt it was important to ask some other people what they thought and get some input.

I had probably 25-30 conversations with people, just asking what they would include in a community like this. I learned a lot of valuable things. Then when I went to do a private beta launch in early December, I went back to many of those people and offered an invitation to join the group because I had used many of those ideas.

This applies to books or anything else you are launching. It’s important to make sure there is some kind of market for the product you are creating. This is step many of us creative types like to skip because it’s time consuming and it doesn’t feel very creative. But I really encourage you to dig into this and put your business owner hat on when you are thinking about offering something for sale.

2. When you launch, you will be surprised by the people who will ignore you and support you.

This has surprised me on both fronts the last couple of months. I have honestly been surprised at the people who have come out of the woodwork and either been interested in the DW community, or they have shared posts about it and expressed interest.

On the flip side, here is what is even more interesting. There have been some people who I assumed would want to join, based on what they said they want. A number of people who have talked to me about writing over the years, and who I assume would be a natural shoe-in, didn’t respond to messages or emails. I don’t take this personally. A lot of this has to do with money. It creates a clear dividing line between support and non-support.

If you have built something worthwhile, and you are charging a fair price for it, and you do your marketing the right way, over time people will sign up for it. But it will be surprising who will be interested, and who won’t. I find it all very fascinating because there are constant surprises.

3. You must put in the work to build something meaningful.

Now I offer this lesson here as a surprising one because the amount of work it takes to create something worthwhile is always probably surprising. I was just telling someone today that success is about 10% talent and 90% pure effort and stubbornness, and persisting until you have finished. And I really believe that.

In order to put this community together and launch, here are some of the things I needed to do:

• Get clarity who it’s for and not for.
• Talk to a couple dozen people to get pre-feedback. These were extensive conversations, not just short ones.
• Decide on the features I was going to offer and what each of those would look like.
• Have graphics designed.
• Decide on price points, which was very tricky
• Set up the FB group and Membervault, where the resources and courses are stored. Then I integrated that into ConvertKit (email marketing) and Stripe (payment processing).fore.
• Build a sales page and create a video.
• Send out personal emails to a couple dozen people with an invite to join the private beta launch group.
• Craft an email to my list about the launch
• Engage with the group for several weeks before the launch. This included community calls, writing sprints, and other things.
• Figure out my marketing copy and launch strategy for the podcast and social media.

Those are some things that were involved in building this.  Whatever big project you’re working on, you have to embrace that it’s going to be a long haul and just commit to doing the work.

4. You will never feel ready to launch, but do it anyway.

So I’m just going to be flat out honest with you. I was supposed to do a public launch the week that I released the podcast episode about the DW community. The podcast episode came out on Sunday, two weeks ago. Then on Tuesday and Thursday of that week, I was going to do social media posts and send an email to my list about it.

However, I didn’t pull the trigger on putting it out there on social media that week. I delayed it by a week for no good reason. I started to really doubt whether people would embrace it. It was a classic moment of doubting yourself and being a little afraid of what people would think.

Well, I finally got my ducks in a row and got a little more organized that week, so it all turned out just fine. And then I decided that even though I felt intimidated by really putting this out there on social media, I was going to practice what I preach and do the courageous thing.

Here is the lesson I took away from this: you are never ready for the bigger challenges. You prepare and do your best, but you aren’t ready, really. If you felt totally ready, that means the challenge is not big enough. instead, we grow into those challenges. They force us to expand and grow, and then we can take on something even bigger.

Now that I’m on the other side of this launch, I know that I have grown in my courage and I have learned a lot from this experience. And I think that’s the way it goes for anybody who attempts something you don’t feel ready for. So I encourage you to keep pushing ahead with big goals.

5. Don’t take anything personally.

This is a surprising lesson because it feels like one I’m constantly learning. When you put your heart and soul into something like launching a membership community, or writing a book, or anything else, it feels very personal to you. But it’s important to step back and remember that this is also a business. When someone isn’t interested in what you’re offering, or when they join and then decide to cancel, or when they don’t have the response you think they might have had … none of that is personal.

One thing I have to keep reminding myself is that people do things for their own reasons. We have reasons we present to the world, and then we have our own internal reasons for doing things. I remember something I read in a Robert Greene book a while back (either that, or I heard it in an interview he was doing). He said that our actions are often designed to conceal our true thoughts or intentions. In other words, we sometimes don’t want people to know what we really think about something, so in order to avoid confrontation or hurt feelings, we pretend to be excited about it.

Now you can easily say this is a cynical or a pessimistic view of human nature, but I think it’s pretty much accurate. It doesn’t mean that everybody hates you, it just means that people are complicated, including you and me. We all have our own reasons for doing things. And despite what we say or project to the world, the real proof of the pudding lies in our actions. Some people who pretend to support you, won’t actually do it when the time comes to put it into action. Other people who are completely silent will step up to the plate and really support you.

Remember, none of this is personal. I think it’s a good philosophy of life to just let people be and let people support what they want to support. My job, and your job, is to create the very best community or book or whatever that we can, and then add so much value to people that the right ones will want to support us.

Thanks for Listening!

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The post 5 Surprising Lessons from Launching the Daily Writer Community appeared first on Daily Writer | Essential Habits for Impact & Influence.