Pull your chair in closer, we've got a lot to chat about today... First a REALLY BIG discovery over on Substack... Yesterday you might have noticed in the email I sent you from Substack - about the perks page over there and upgrading, that, if you were logged into Substack, your first name appeared! This is a screen shot of the email to myself. Okay, so the way you make that happen is to use this %%first_name%% if they are not logged into Substack they will just see an extra little space like you hit the space bar too many times between words. This works in articles too! It doesn't work in the notes section though. 😢😭 🪻🐮🍂🔥🍂🪻 Moving on... Today is the monetize your mission mastermind at 2pm here: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82173053137?pwd=LvWmj0jftv7dmZv7xB0lKcaarU1YHs.1&jst=2 @Bo McCoy is going to come share with us how to create an AI agent to help us with Substack - not only will he show us what his looks like - he's planning to walk us through creating our OWN!! (and he sent me the handy dandy cheat sheet so you won't have to take notes!) I'm pretty jacked for this mastermind let me tell you. This is for those who are new to AI and those who are experienced users - I know everyone will take something away they can use. 🪻🐮🍂🔥🍂🪻 Now back to the posting about lives community members are doing... I'm trying to sort what the best, most useful way to do this will be. Because this is already a paid community - all of the options are part of the membership 1. I could create a form and use it to do a weekly announcement on Mondays. 2. I could create a classroom with them listed and put them on the calendar 3. I could create a thread each week that everyone could add to - this is the easiest 4. Already an option - you can simply create a post about what's coming up in the community I'll create a poll for this so you can let me know.

@Kate Boelhauf just upgraded to Premium, which means she'll be joining our live intensives, getting access to the replay library, and building her Substack alongside the rest of us. Thanks for investing in yourself, Kate. I'm excited to watch your publication grow! Please share what you're doing now and your Substack URL if you have one already.

Started my day wandering the woo with @Alice Hlidkova and her podcast exploring consciousness. Trying to get my mind back into the Substack space... Part of what I love about Substack is that you can explore so many different facets of life. That curiosity frames the conversations rather than dogmatic proclamations. People genuinely seem to want to make the world a better place there, and to connect. So the question might come up... Why do you keep talking about monetizing over there? I'd like to take just a minute to share my thoughts on money (technically currency, but we call it money -they aren't actually the same thing), compensation, and exchange. Money doesn't exist... and it does. At its core, it's simply an exchange of energy. When you write on Substack, publish a podcast, or create a video, and you've connected your publication to Stripe, several things happen. To start with, Substack takes you more seriously. After all, they get paid when you do, so it's in their best interest to promote publications where that possibility exists. Next, it gives your readers an opportunity to support you. Even if you're just starting out... even if you don't have all your ducks in a row... people genuinely like encouraging creators whose work has touched them. Why not give them the opportunity? In his book The Hacking of the American Mind, Dr. Robert Lustig talks about dopamine and serotonin. One of the fascinating things he points out is that giving can trigger the release of serotonin - the neurotransmitter associated with well-being and connection. When you make it easy for people to support your work, you're allowing them to choose generosity. When there isn't a way to give, you've already made that decision for them. That's why I'm such a believer in turning on paid subscriptions from the beginning. Not because you need to expect everyone to pay. Not because your content has to become a sales pitch.

As this is a public space (rather than private) anything posted here is open for indexing - Feel free to share your links and a description about them. I will be moving the Directory over here too.