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.

It's dark and raining, my candle is crackling and my coffee is particularly good this morning - shaping up to be a lovely day. Don't you just love how every day is a new opportunity for discovery & reminders of things you might have known but forgot? Yep, me too ... So, here's a few things from yesterday - 1. Skool has put a review option in place for people who are paid members of a community - this helps people in 3 ways - a) it helps the reviewer because they gain visibility on the about page of growing communities b) it helps people learning about the community see that it's worth exploring c) it helps the community grow. 2. If you're a paid community member you can pop over here and leave a review if you so choose. It's another way that Skool has designed to encourage people to become paid community members along with the new Upgrade button for Freemium communities. Also, yesterday @Carol Hudnell posted a thread about making videos from posts - you know I had forgotten about that feature on Substack! Right now, there are so many features over there that it is getting hard to keep them all straight! But yes, you can make a short video from written content to share as a story or video on Instagram and FB. You can't highlight very much text for this as it's short - like just a few seconds - but it is a thing over there. You can find the option on the "share" page after you publish your article. ☘️🍂🪻🌼🍂🪻☘️ Also, a few days ago (over the weekend) I created a quick video about creating your profile over on Substack - you can find this video and the brand new tool over in the Quick Start Guide to Substack & Podcasts in this section #💛Create a Substack Profile That Converts The tool will help you create your bio. Try it out and let me know what you think... ☘️🍂🪻🌼🍂🪻☘️

Notes.... I wrote word about ten minutes ago - I keep getting distracted with the Podcast Challenge - LOL Our team is in the lead in case you're wondering. Alright back to notes. 📝 Why I Keep Encouraging You to Post 3 Notes a Day I talk about Notes a lot around here — and there’s a reason. Notes are one of the best discovery tools Substack gives us. Your newsletter primarily nurtures the people who have already found you. Notes can introduce you to people who have absolutely no idea who you are yet. 👋 Claudia Faith recently shared that one of her posts brought her 33 new subscribers. Only TWO came from her email list. Seventeen came through the Substack feed - and of 578 views attributed to the Substack app, 537 were from people who weren't already subscribed to her. 💡 That’s what I want you to understand about Notes. You are not just talking to the people who already follow you. You're putting little breadcrumbs into the Substack ecosystem that can lead the right people back to you. 🤔 So why 3 Notes a day? Not because every Note is going to take off. It won't. In fact, an analysis of 1.3 million Notes found that true viral Notes were incredibly rare - roughly 1 in 10,000. (as we saw from @Soph Newman and her 10K followers experiment though it can happen) And I actually think that's good news. 🚫 We don't need to chase viral. We're building consistent visibility. Three Notes a day gives you 21 opportunities every week for someone new to encounter an idea, story, observation or belief that makes them think: Oh. I like how this person thinks. ✨ That's the job of a Note. Derek Hughes describes Notes as little acts of positioning. You're showing people: 👉 how you think 👉 what you value 👉 what you believe 👉 who you're for The right people recognize themselves in what you're saying - and everyone else can keep scrolling. That's very different from trying to cram a miniature newsletter into every Note.

Did you have all the fun this weekend? Yep, me too! It was productive AND relaxing which is kind of weird, but I like it. This week begins a 21-day Podcast Roadmap Challenge (of sorts) put on by a mentor of mine and the person who introduced me to Skool, Jamie Atkinson. I'll be a team leader for one of the groups - lots of cool prizes have been offered - not sure what those are just yet - but I'm pretty excited for it. At any rate Jamie posted the community members on Telegram for the team leaders last night and I almost fell off the bed when I saw @Vinayak Ramesh will be part of my team!! Let's do this thing!! I'll keep you all posted and I'm sure Vinayak could use your help when we get to the part where he will be setting up his launch. Are you all game? 🌿🥳🎙️🎀🎙️🥳🌿 Wednesday is the Social Hour Q&A 1pm mtn for everyone - Calendar · Learn Substack🔥 Thursday @Bo McCoyhas promised to come share how to create an agent for helping with Substack commenting on the Mastermind at 2pm mtn and this is open for everyone also - Calendar · Learn Substack🔥 🌿🥳🎙️🎀🎙️🥳🌿 The classroom got lots of upgrades over the weekend - All of the Foundation is laid and the Publish Section is in there I've got 3 more sections that I'll be adding over time New here? Check out #💛Welcome to Learn Substack! and check out the images here for the get started roadmap... 🌿🥳🎙️🎀🎙️🥳🌿 Post your links to notes, chats & articles over on Substack and we'll "boost" them by commenting, liking and restacking where appropriate. 🌿🥳🎙️🎀🎙️🥳🌿

The big town and dinner were fun - but the heat - oh my cow - not a fan. Maybe it's because I'm not as young as I once was, but temperatures over 90 wipe me out. And yesterday was over 100 and the smoke from all the fires makes it feel surreal. I struggle to think when it's like this out - like my brain can't focus - I'm actually afraid to drive in these conditions. Is it just me? Been making lots of progress with this community and adding to the "vending machine" also known as the classroom. Today will be "Publishing Rhythm" - all about creating a rhythm for creating and syndicating content. I've been learning a lot about creating & growing Skool communities and leveraging the Growth Boost here AI surprised me yesterday. Not even sure if it did it on purpose or not! I've been building tools with Claude and wanted to build an assessment for a lead magnet for a Connx ad I'm going to run (these are really inexpensive ads like 40 cents a lead/email address) As I was creating the framework for what I wanted Chatgpt just made it for me. You are welcome to check it out here - I think it turned out pretty well for a lead magnet - https://hartlifecoach.com/vpq 🥜🫛🫚🥦🫚🫛🥜 Next week @Bo McCoy will be joining us for the Monetize Your Mission Mastermind to chat about creating an agent for commenting on Substack - it will be back at its normal time of 2pm mtn on Thursday. I think we'll also be chatting about using AI as an assistant versus using it to replace us. The new tool I created for crafting a Substack Post is not a quick 3-minute exercise in creating an article - it's a tool that will make you think and help you walk through crafting a post that brings real value to your readers. It's designed to find angles not already covered ad nauseum and then craft a post that is seo'd properly. You can start from an idea or a complete post and it will help you tailor it so that it passes the GIST filter in that it's adding something unique to the conversation.