Writing

Help Me Bootstrap a New Podcast!

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

I’m launching a new podcast this summer!

Startup Pregnant: a podcast about women in leadership, work, and life.

The podcast shares the stories of women before, during, and after pregnancy and into early parenting. From working, to building businesses, to accelerating your leadership, to growing families, I’m interviewing women on their lives and livelihoods and what they’ve done to grow both.

We’re looking for our early sponsors — help me bootstrap our first season:

If you’d love to see this podcast get rolling, head on over to Patreon to support us.

  • Micro-sponsors: We’re looking for micro-sponsorships, so you can chip in anywhere from $1/month to $4/month to help us build momentum and record an amazing new podcast to add to the airwaves. For the cost of a cup of coffee each month, you can become a backer!
  • Show sponsors ($100): Got a company or project that you’d like to advertise? We’re looking for companies that are a great match for this audience that would like to sponsor one episode per month. You’ll get a 30-second advertising spot in the show every month for as long as you are a sponsor.
  • Master patron ($250): Get listed in the show’s front notes as a sponsor, a shout-out feature story about your company (90 seconds) in one episode each month, which I will work with you to craft to perfection. The story will land in the first 22 minutes of the podcast. You’ll also be listed on the podcast page of our website as a featured sponsor.

There are lots of different options to sponsor the podcast. Help us bring the stories of women in leadership, life, and work to the airwaves!

Support us on Patreon and sponsor the Startup Pregnant podcast!

About the podcast: what are we driving towards?

The podcast looks at deep human question around what it means to become a parent, to grow a business, to embrace a body of work, to deal with failure, to shift in identity, to learn, and to grow. Throughout both “Startup” and “Pregnant,” we look at what it means to undergo these most profound transformations that come with creating new things from scratch.

Startup Pregnant isn’t strictly about startups and pregnancy; instead, it’s about the deep transformative power that growing businesses and babies taps requires, and how we change as a result.

Transformation isn’t easy, in fact, it’s often painful, but it’s one of the most beautiful parts of being a human.

The podcast will address questions like:

  • What can business learn from women and pregnancy, and what can pregnancy learn from business?
  • How did the growth of your business or family affect how you showed up in the world? What strategies did you use to learn, grow, and adapt?
  • How can we re-imagine what women in the workforce can look like?
  • What do you wish your CEOs and colleagues knew about pregnancy and the journey into parenthood?
  • Does parenthood change your work life, for the better? How does it change your creativity or management style?
  • How do these powerful forces of feminine energy, willpower, and strength intersect and provoke better entrepreneurship, invention, and collaboration?

We’re Launching in July/August 2017:

  • We are bootstrapping most of the first season of the podcast.
  • When we hit $100 per month in backing, we’ll prep the launch of season 1!
  • When we hit $250 per month in backing, we will improve our sound quality, audio mixing, and production.
  • When we reach $500, we we will begin preparing seasons 2 & 3.
  • Check out our Patreon page for more details.

Join me in my podcast (and my mission) to share deeper, wiser, and more profound stories of women at work.

Support the podcast here.

In my own experience of being pregnant while working at a Y-combinator backed startup: it isn’t easy. But like so many things in life, it’s worth it. In fact, many parts of it challenged my bones, my soul, and my stamina unlike anything else I’d experienced — like most things in life that are hard, it was also unbelievably worth it.

The podcast is a way to bring women to the table to have a conversation about what it means to be a woman in leadership and in work, all while raising families.

If you are like me and enjoy contemplating the absurdity of growing a human inside a human, if you don’t mind the stress of figuring out just exactly how a business will survive, and if you don’t mind the chatter of voices that wonder constantly how, exactly, you’ll pull this off — then you can laugh, cry, and wince along side me as I take you inside the stories of women working on great endeavors.

Start Sooner: How One Conference Kickstarted My Blog, My Business, and My Freedom

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Want to win a free ticket to an amazing conference this June 23-35? Read to the end—details on how to win a ticket to the conference are below. Make sure you enter before June 5, 2017.

It was 2011, and I was living in San Francisco.

I worked my day job as a landscape architect working long hours at a big firm in Sausalito, and had night jobs as a high school tutor and weekend swim coach. I spent time writing my blog in the wee mornings.

I’d heard of a book and blog about living an unconventional life by a blogger who was pretty famous. Chris Guillebea talked about how much more there was to the design of our lives, and how we could make things happen in completely different ways than the world was telling us.

Minimalism, travel hacking, freedom. I was hooked.

I signed up with some big dollars to go to the conference — $499 was no joke on the salary I was pulling in. Friends from the internet and friends in real-life piled into a car. (Did I drive or fly?).

On a whim, I decided to put my own blog together more seriously. All those doubts that plague you? I had them: who was I to write? What did I have to say? But I stayed up late hacking together a WordPress site with zero knowledge for how to do it (Google to the rescue!), transferred all my best blog posts to the site, and printed out some personal business cards. Made my way to Portland for my first big conference.

I showed up to the conference knowing exactly no one.

But I showed up.

I stood outside by myself, willing. Open. Waiting. Nervous as all get out.

And then a two-year-old ran up to me and threw her arms up and I laughed and threw my arms out. Suddenly Adam Baker, Courtney Baker, and Laura Roeder and I were giggling and running around on the grass in a big line of people waiting for the conference to begin.

I relaxed, dropped my shoulders back, and started saying hi to new faces. I met Pam Slim, Scott Dinsmore, Leo Babauta, and Danielle LaPorte for the first time. I didn’t even know to be intimidated because it was all so new to me.

By the end of the conference, I’d had a macaroni and cheese date, driven around in a Volvo with too many other people, stayed out late making mischief in Portland, done yoga in the park with new friends, enjoyed hammock time, listened with wonder at people’s stories, and met people I’ve been in touch with ever since.

And I wrote up recaps for each day of the conference with those same wide eyes. (Here are the Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3 recaps!)

That conference was the weekend my blog became a reality.

And my work took a new turn.

More than any course, metric, skill, or tactic, the people you surround yourself will make the biggest difference in your life and career.

Conferences can be transformative experiences. When you bring people together in one place, for one weekend, to celebrate, to learn, and to connect, you leave changed.

That weekend I met people who have since kept me accountable, people I text when I’m figuring out the next step in my business, and people I learn from on a weekly basis. These wonderful people are constantly introducing me to new ideas and perspectives, challenging me, and helping me grow.

Your network, your tribe, your connections are the lifeblood of your business.

Beyond just the speakers on stage, here’s what conferences provide:

  • Workshops and real-time opportunities to move through ideas.
  • A chance to unlock or break through a past mindset.
  • An opportunity to try out your new ideas, bio, pitch, or story. (What better way to get better than talk it out a dozen times?)
  • The chance to meet new people who can become business friends (and friends in real life!) for a long, long time to come.

The people you surround yourself with matter.

Next month, I’m heading out to Boise, Idaho for 4 days to join the crew putting on the Craft + Commerce conference with the team at ConvertKit.

I’ll be on stage on the last day, Sunday, giving a talk about my experiences in motherhood and entrepreneurship, and how becoming a parent taught me to level up (yet again) in my business life.

After six years since that day I decided to step in and join the fun, I’ll be back, on stage, telling my own story:

Beyond the adrenaline rush: How becoming a parent taught me to level up (yet again) in business

(And let’s be honest — I go right before Seth Godin. I’m definitely a little bit nervous about that, I won’t lie.)

If you want to join me for an unforgettable weekend, I’ll be in Boise to meet new friends and hang with old friends. I’ll likely teach a workshop or host a group yoga class, as well. A few attendees and I are looking to put something on the calendar so we can go to a yoga class together!

It’s been a while since I’ve been out traveling the conference circuit (becoming a mom was enough of a challenge for a while), and I’m excited to get back and say hi and meet lots of new faces.

And I have a special place in my heart for people who put conferences together. Conferences are really hard to execute, they require a huge investment of energy and capital, and they are, first and foremost, always about the attendees.

Grab your ticket to the conference here: https://convertkit.com/conference

See you in Boise in June!

PS: As a speaker at the conference, I get one free ticket to give as a scholarship / giveaway. Leave a comment over on this Facebook Post by midnight on Monday, June 5th with your answer to the following question:

What do you need to start sooner? 

No Excuses: How to Stop Bullshitting Yourself and up your Mental Game

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

No excuses: how to go beyond what you think is possible

It was my junior year of college, and my third year making the National team as a varsity swimmer.

We were two weeks out before the big races: the national swimming meet drew colleges like Emory, Kenyon, MIT, Williams, Amherst, and Johns Hopkins. The 3-day event is held in March in a major U.S. city every year. From the time we got back on campus in the Fall, up until this point in March, we were training. Swimming was life, and life was swimming. Training started in earnest in September, and we had 10 practices each week, often clocking in 10,000 yards of swimming on a daily basis.

I lived in the dorms, housed with three other women in a two-bedroom suite with a shared bathroom. We had access to a dorm kitchen downstairs. A brilliant thought came to mind that early day in March: why don’t I make some cookies for the team?

For however well I could swim in the water, however, I couldn’t walk on land for shit. I fell down a flight of stairs, broke my foot, and realized with panic that I’d have to go see my coach and tell him that I’d just broken my foot.

I broke my foot two weeks before the national meet and didn’t know whether or not I’d be able to swim.

I grabbed an ice pack, put in on my foot, and called my mom. “What do I do? Do you think it’ll heal by tomorrow?”

The next day, my coach looked at my foot and said, “What the hell did you do?”

“Go get in my office.”

(He said this kindly, but it was still very intimidating.)

I hobbled across the deck and went into his office and shut the door.

In his office, he asked me what happened. After a few moments, he paused, look at me, and told me that I’d have to choose.

Would I be swimming on the national team, or would I be done for the season?

“I don’t care which way you decide. But if you choose to swim on the national team—if you’re going to train these next two weeks, and get in the pool to race—I don’t want to hear another word about your broken foot until after the meet is over.”

I was wide-eyed.

But in retrospect, it was one of the kindest things he could have done.

This story—and what happens next— I dig into in detail with Steph Crowder on her podcast, Courage and Clarity. We talk about how these specific life events shape us, and the backstories behind where we are today. (I’m actually on two episodes with her: in the first, we break down how to overcome mental weakness, kill excuses, and make things happen even in shitty circumstances. In the second, we look at how to create clarity in your business through a decision-making tool I love.

But back to the story.

That day, down at the pool, when my coach made me make a decision about how I would proceed, he taught me the power of mindset and how important it is to not let an excuse build up in front of you.

I had a great opportunity to make an excuse: my foot was broken!

Sure, you can have a broken foot. But I could also hang my hat on that as a reason for why something wouldn’t work, and opt myself out mentally, before I’d even given myself a chance.

The true test of perseverance and resilience, the people who make it through their 20 Mile March are the ones who look at that moment when they COULD make an excuse and they say, “I’m choosing to do it anyways.”

(For those worried about my foot, I went to the doctor and they said I wouldn’t cause any further damage to it by using it in swimming. If I was a runner, it might have been another story.)

The person who wins, the person who makes it happen isn’t the person who has some magical better circumstances than you.

No one has perfect circumstances. I realized, as I looked around the pool, that everyone has something—tired, bad night of sleep, social stress, and more—and the ones who find a way to do it in spite of, and alongside, all that’s going on, are the ones that rise to the top. When we make excuses, we’re just making excuses.

My coach gave me a gift: the gift of letting this major hurdle go. Every day I iced and wrapped my foot, and in the pool, I spent time practicing how to do a new swim start, a dive, with my foot in a different position.

And, I realized: my foot didn’t hurt too much—the swelling made it somewhat protected and wrapped. And as a sprinter, the adrenaline fueled my body before I had even a fraction of a second to register that there was pain.

I went on to swim in 17 different races across three days. By the end of the meet, I earned three All-American trophies and placed in the top 16 in the nation for swimming alongside my teammates.

And I had a broken foot.

You’re either strengthening the muscle that makes excuses, or you’re strengthening the muscle that does it anyway.

###

Huge thanks to Steph Crowder for inviting me to join her on the Courage and Clarity podcast. Listen to the full story on Episode 31 here: https://www.courageandclarity.com/podcast/31 . If you’d like to hear more stories like this, check out the entire podcast with amazing courage stories and their badass business wisdom.

Book Notes: How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

I’m adding more book notes to my website, taking the highlights from the books that I read, condensing them down, editing them out, and putting them into a blog post. To see all my book notes and recommendations, check out the books category on this blog.

Last month I read “How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen: A Survival Guide to Life with Children Ages 2-7,” and it struck me that while this book is ostensibly a parenting book for small children, it could be tweaked to be a great management book, too.

The key? Listen to people’s emotions, and, when replying to them, describe what they’re feeling and why they’re feeling it. It’s the trick to better communication for everyone. Rather than telling someone why they shouldn’t feel the way they feel, or skipping straight to fixing problems, simply telling someone that you see how they’re feeling works wonders.

“The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.” —Peggy O’Mara

Here are the greatest quotes and highlights from the book:

“The point is that we can’t behave right when we don’t feel right. And kids can’t behave right when they don’t feel right. If we don’t take care of their feelings first, we have little chance of engaging their cooperation.”

We can’t behave right when we don’t feel right. It’s so hard as an adult, too!

“We don’t want to accept negative feelings because they’re so . . . well . . . negative. We don’t want to give them any power. We want to correct them, diminish them, or preferably make them disappear altogether. Our intuition tells us to push those feelings away as fast and hard as possible. But this is one instance in which our intuition is leading us astray.”

Lean into the negative feeling, and work with it, not against it.

“When their feelings are acknowledged, people feel relieved: She understands me. I feel better. Maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe I can handle it.”

How beautiful is it to be understood? But here’s how to do it in action:

1. Grit your teeth and resist the urge to immediately contradict him!
2. Think about the emotion he is feeling
3. Name the emotion and put it in a sentence.

“You are giving your child a crucial vocabulary of feelings that he can resort to in times of need. When he can wail, “I AM FRUSTRATED!” instead of biting, kicking, and hitting, you will feel the thrill of triumph!”

“Just accept the feeling. Often a simple acknowledgment of the feeling is enough to defuse a potential meltdown.”

So what if you make a mistake? Well, you’re human. Here’s how to do it:

“The good thing about being a parent is that if you blow it the first time, you almost always get another chance.”

“My mother used to gesture wiping a slate clean and say, “Erase and start again!” But that’s old school. She’s from the generation of chalkboards. Have kids even heard of a chalkboard these days? Some parents in my groups have used the word Rewind! as they walk backward out of a room and then reenter with more accepting words. Even that has an old-fashioned sound now that cassette tapes have become a thing of the past. What would be the modern equivalent of asking for a second chance? Perhaps yelling “Control Alt Delete!” or “Reset!” with the motion of a finger pressing an imaginary button?”

“A child’s emotions are just as real and important to him as our grown-up emotions are to us.”

“We do these things automatically—protect against sad emotions, dismiss what we see as trivial emotions, and discourage angry emotions. We don’t want to reinforce negative feelings.”

“Without having their own feelings acknowledged first, children will be deaf to our finest explanations and most passionate entreaties.”

“Children depend on us to name their feelings so that they can find out who they are.”

Our voice gives recognition and awareness and truth to the people around us.

“Children need us to validate their feelings so they can become grown-ups who know who they are and what they feel. We are also laying the groundwork for a person who can respect and not dismiss the needs and feelings of other people.”

“Even gentle questions can feel like an interrogation when a child is in distress. He may not know why he is upset. He may not be able to express it clearly in words.”

“The gift we can give them is to not get in the way of their process by jumping in with our reactions: advice, questions, corrections. The important thing is to give them our full attention and trust them to work it out.”

“So our kids get told what to do. All day long. That’s the reality of being a kid. And they should listen, because we’re in charge and we’re just trying to do what’s best for them, and keep them from killing themselves, or at least protect them from stinkiness, rotted teeth, malnutrition, and exhaustion.”

Sometimes we just need someone to listen and nod, not boss us around, or tell us what we’re feeling isn’t the right thing to be feeling.

“The problem is, nobody likes to be ordered around. A parent in one of my groups put it succinctly: “Even if I want to do something, as soon as somebody tells me to do it, I don’t want to do it anymore.”
Kids often respond well when we give them the words they can use to get what they want. The younger the child is, the more explicit you can be about giving him the language you prefer to hear.”

“Study after study has found that young children who are not constantly ordered around are much more likely to cooperate with simple requests from a parent—for example, cleaning up toys when asked—than children who are micromanaged and controlled much of the time.”

I found this next part about punishments and consequences fascinating. They advocate problem-solving over any form of punishment—at all. My little one is too small to know whether or not this works, yet, but I’m really curious to learn more about it.

“As for logical consequences, the “logic” is highly debatable. If you continually arrive late for my workshop, despite my warning that lateness is unacceptable, I may find it “logical” to lock you out of my classroom. Or perhaps it would be more “logical” to keep you locked in after class for the same number of minutes you were late. Or maybe my “logic” demands that you miss out on the snacks. As you may be starting to suspect, these are not true exercises in logic. They’re really more of a free association, where we try to think of a way to make the wrongdoer suffer. We hope that the suffering will motivate the offender to do better in the future.”

“It is kind of stunning how much our kids really do want to emulate us. And how much they focus on our overall strategy. It’s a tired old phrase but true: children will do as you do, not as you say.”

“The best way to inspire a child to do better in the future is to give him an opportunity to do better in the present.”

“Taking action to protect yourself and those around you is an essential life skill for adults and a powerful way to model for our children how to deal with conflict.”

“One of the keys to successful problem solving is to wait for a time when the mood is right. It can’t be done in the midst of frustration and anger. After the storm has passed, invite your child to sit down with you.”

“Chances are that if your child participated in coming up with solutions, he’ll be eager to try them out. You’ll find yourself at the park, feeling good, with a cooperative child who is getting valuable practice in solving the thorny problems of life. You skipped the whole punishment phase of the parenting journey and went directly to solving the problem.”

“Instead of thinking, “How can I control this child?” we can think of our child as being on the same team and invite his help and participation.”

Punishments and rewards don’t always work as well as we think.

“One study found that when people are offered large monetary rewards to complete a challenge, their creativity and engagement in the task plummets. Rewards helped people perform well on some very simple mechanical tasks, but as soon as they needed cognitive skills, rewards interfered with their ability to function.”

“Creating a family atmosphere of seeking solutions rather than inventing punishments will still stand you in good stead in the long run.”

“The most powerful tool you can wield is their sense of connection to you. The fact that you are willing to consider their feelings and solicit their opinions will keep their hearts and minds open to your feelings and opinions.”

“But when we use words that evaluate, we often achieve the opposite effect. As you probably noticed when reading the scenarios above, praise that judges or evaluates can create problems.”

“The first rule of praise is that it’s not always appropriate to praise.”

“All kids want to connect, all kids want to be understood, all kids want a say in what they do and how they do it.”

“When we demonstrate generosity of spirit by accepting feelings, we help our children become more resilient”

“We need to meet basic needs before any communication tools will work for us.”

“One of these is the biological need for recovery time. When we get angry, our bodies are flooded with hormones.”

“The need not to be overwhelmed.”

“Kids can’t act right when they don’t feel right.”

Amen. True for adults, too.

How Will You Measure Your Life? The Art of Managing Yourself

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

This morning I was fortunate enough to wake up at 5:06am, an hour before my baby wakes up, and I had a rare hour to myself to read, write, and meditate. I picked up an HBR series called “On Managing Yourself” and meandered through Clayton Christensen’s essay, “How Will You Measure Your Life?” These are some of his insights that stuck with me, from how to spend your time, to why management is such a critical art in both your personal and professional life.

For me, mornings have been different for the last two years, first because of the fatigue of pregnancy (where waking up early was a rarity) and then because of the newness and immediacy of motherhood. I haven’t had time to write like I used to.

Instead, my mornings now look like this: my little one and I rise around 6am, and we spend the first two hours of the day feeding, changing, playing, nursing, getting dressed, getting food prepped, and walking to daycare. It’s a shift of no small measure. It’s time for me to be present with my kid, and moreover: it’s a time when he needs me to be there, continuously, in service to his needs.

So waking up before he did was a pleasant surprise, and I can’t express the gratitude I have for being able to read slowly and uninterrupted. Here’s what I learned this morning about creating your life and managing yourself:

1. Create a strategy for your life.

We create strategies for our businesses and our work, but we rarely create strategies for our own lives. As a result, our personal relationships and overall happiness suffer, because we forget to invest in things like relationships, spending time with family, cultivating a strong connection with our spouse, and enjoying our children or side projects. Managing yourself and your time is as valuable as the work that you do in your career.
“Keep the purpose of your life front and center as you decide how to spent your time, talents, and energy.” — Clayton Christensen

2. We consistently allocate resources ineffectively. First, by over-allocating time and resources to our careers, and second, by under-allocating to our other pursuits.

“When people who have a high need for achievement have an extra half-hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they’ll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments,” he writes. And because our careers are the easiest place to measure our output, it’s easy to spend most of our time, effort, and energy on our careers. But is this wise, and is this truly what we want? “Raising a great kid,” doesn’t have an easy metric, and probably never will. But it might be something that you want to spend time on. Knowing that it’s harder to allocate time to things that aren’t as easy to measure output-wise can help us re-center our attention across all of the things that matter to us.

3. Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well.

If you’re managing other people, or even yourself, your job is extremely important. You don’t just manage the time people spend at work, you also shape the way people leave work at the end of the day, and how they are when they head home.

If you’ve been a shitty manager, you may have people leave work frustrated, disappointed, or discouraged, and that’s who they are when they head home to their families. What if you could manage to leave people inspired, accomplished, and satisfied, and they went home feeling full, grounded, and creative?

In my own business, it reminds me that I’m not just hiring someone to “get things done.” I’m hiring for relationships, for deeply satisfying work, and for joy. The people I’m working with now on Startup Pregnant are deeply intuitive, thoughtful, and mindful. They bring me joy to work with them, and, it’s my hope that I inspire them as well.

And in your own life, if you treat it like a business, reflect: how are you managing yourself and your time? Are you treating your life like the valuable asset and creation it is?

4. Consulting and coaching aren’t about providing specific solutions; they’re about guiding people through a process that helps them find the solution on their own.

“When people ask what I think they should do, I rarely answer their question directly,” Christensen writes. “Instead, I run the question aloud through one of my models […] and they’ll answer their own question more insightfully than I could have.”

The most profound leaders all share this wise insight: that coaching and providing insight to others isn’t about telling them what to do. It’s about cultivating deep listening practices and guiding people towards a way to access insights within their own wisdom. What I’ve been reading lately — Krista Tippet’s On Being Wise, to Michael Bungay Stanier’s The Coaching Habit, and to the deep listening practices from Thich Naht Hanh — are all influencing the models I’ve built in my private Mastermind accelerator. In our small group, where confidentiality and conversation are paramount, our monthly Deep Dive practices  are not about giving advice to each other, but about constructive, effective deep listening practices to guide people into better understanding themselves and the puzzles they’re working on.

5. “Just this once” is the most dangerous justification, and is probably why people end up cheating, being dishonest, and going to jail.

The simplest justification to yourself is that you’ll only do something once. If you follow this to it’s logical end, you’ll regret where you end up.

6. Humility comes from high self-esteem, not low self-esteem.

Having a high sense of self-esteem and a high regard for others were the traits that Christensen found were most in line with the most humble people they knew. “They knew who they were, and they felt good about who they were.” People who feel good about themselves are not boastful or self-deprecating. They are satisfied and eager to connect with others, and to help others grow as well.

In his work with the highest achievers at places like Harvard, he found that people could develop and grow to a point where they felt they no longer had mentors or people to look up to. This, however, was important to learn from. “If your attitude is that only smarter people have something to teach you, your learning opportunities will be very limited,” he writes. Instead, stay humble, stay eager, and remember that you can learn from everyone.

7. Know how you measure your life

“Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you’ve achieve; worry about the individuals you’ve helped to become better people.” — Christensen

As he gets older, Christensen says that his projects or accomplishments matter less and less, but the individual lives he’s touched are what matters most. I’m inspired to bring this into my life, and remember that now, the only thing I have is the people in front of me in this moment, and the attention and love I can bring into today.

And as I finish typing this, my baby is knocking on the crib, reminding me that it’s time to put my book down, set my phone aside, and go help him up out of the crib and into his day. Spending time with him might not get more writing done, and it might not help me check off more from my To-Do list for work, but it will be part of the whole life that I’m living, and I’m grateful to spend time with him. And I’m grateful that this morning, I woke up early enough to write again. In reflecting on my self-management, I wonder, is it time to start rising early again to make more space for writing?

Today! Get The Writer’s Workshop as Part of The Writer’s Bundle for $99

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

If you’re a writer, or your goals include getting paid to write, publishing a book, or developing your blogging, listen up. This week I’m part of a BIG thing you’ll want to know about and it’s called The Writer’s Bundle.

Every year, The Write Life puts together an amazing package of resources for writers. This year, they’ve bundled together 10 ebooks, courses and tools on freelancing, novel writing, self-publishing, marketing, editing and more.

It’s called The Writer’s Bundle, and you can download it here.

You’ll probably recognize a lot of the people in this bundle, including Ali Luke, Jenny Blake, Joel Friedlander, Carrie Smith, and more (including me!).

Normally my course, The Writer’s Workshop, retails for $300. I rarely, if ever, have sales. This is why it’s a bit ridiculous — you can get my course for a third of the price (just $99!). And you’ll get nine other writing, blogging, and book-publishing courses. What.

The 10 resources available through this year’s bundle normally retail for nearly $1,700. But through this deal, you can get your hands on ALL of them for just $99.

Here’s what’s included when you download The Writer’s Bundle:

  • Stress Less & Impress, From Leah Kalamakis (Course; retails for $247)
  • ProWritingAid, From Chris Banks (Tool; retails for $40)
  • Book Ninja 101: 5-Day Series, From Jenny Blake (Course; retails for $150)
  • Press Release Masterclass, From Joel Friedlander and Joan Stewart (Course; retails for $97)
  • 30 Days to Creative Courage, From Mridu Khullar Relph (Course; retails for $199)
  • Get Paid to Write for Blogs, From Catherine Alford (Course; retails for $497)
  • The Writer’s Workshop, From Sarah K. Peck (Course; retails for $300)
  • Convert More Clients, From Carrie Smith (Course; retails for $59)
  • The Blogger’s Guide to Freelancing, From Ali Luke (Ebook; retails for $29)
  • The 4 Foundational Pillars of Novel Structure, From C.S. Lakin (Course; retails for $49)

Download The Writer’s Bundle Here

The catch? The bundle is only available until Thursday, April 6 at 11:59 p.m. EST. That means if you want it, you should click this link NOW and grab it.

Enjoy, writers!

And yes: when I’m part of group sales like this, I get paid, too. If you’ve been wanting to check out my course and haven’t had the resources, now’s a great time to scoop it up because it won’t be on sale like this for a long, long time!

Want to Take My Writer’s Workshop For Free? I’m Looking For an Amazing Proofreader

Posted on by administrator

This Spring, I’m working my way through the Writer’s Workshop and giving the course a facelift. I can’t believe it’s already been four years since we launched the first round of the course. (In fact, some nostalgic trivia: I still know the names and faces of each of the people in the course and love watching their work evolve and grow to this date.)

I’m looking for a bit of help proofreading and reviewing the course and I’m searching for 2 great editors and proofreaders:

If you’re interested in getting complimentary access to the course in exchange for doing some proofreading, please let me know right away by filling out this form:

Sign up to be a proofreader of The Writer’s Workshop

I’ll be reaching out to people this week, on or before Wednesday, March 15th, 2017.

What the project includes:

  • Get a complimentary login to The Writer’s Workshop
  • Read through the 8 lessons, watch the 4 videos, listen to the 6 interviews, and do each of the exercises as in-depth as you’d like.
  • Review each exercise for typos or time-stamp or context errors (if I reference a past year, for example, we’d update that).
  • Review the email series (approximately 20 emails) for the same.

Note: the course normally takes 2-4 hours per week over 8 weeks to complete, and I’d like you to complete it faster than this. You should be available before March 31st to have approximately 12-16 hours to read and review the course and watch the videos.

And for two people that would like to sign up to do this, I’ll also host an hour-long private writing chat with me about any topic of your choosing and chat about any questions you might have about your own writing practice.

Can’t wait to meet you!

Sign up if you’re interested here.

How to Link Your WordPress Website To Also Publish on Medium

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

You can publish once through WordPress and automatically create a post in Medium. Genius.

Earlier I blasted everyone on my RSS feed with a crazy post of a lot of type headers.

The email, “Medium cross-posting test from WordPress!” was meant to be a test post of publishing to both platforms.

It worked… way too well.

But amazingly, it also got a ton of emails back in my inbox:

How did you do this???

Can you tell me how you set up the Medium cross-posting? Is it a WordPress plugin?

A lot of people ask me what’s better for publishing: WordPress or Medium?

Both have pros and cons as platforms (Medium is beautiful right out of the bat and you can connect with more people sooner; WordPress lets you own your content and collect email addresses).

As far as maintaining ownership over content goes, WordPress has always been the one I stick with.

And then I go back over to Medium and publish there, too.

Fed up, I finally asked the my Facebook universe for advice. I got an amazing answer: use a brilliant plugin to publish to both places at once.

Genius.

Now, don’t do what I did, though — I set up a test post and promptly blasted both my email list and my Medium list with a silly test post with styles and type. There’s a case of systems gone way too well: my WordPress post published on Medium, blasted to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, my personal page, Google+, and beyond. I spent a bit of time wandering around the social web to edit out the sample post.

That email, though, is stuck in your inbox forever.

Here’s how to set up your WordPress site to publish to Medium at the same time:

1 — Install the Medium plugin on your WordPress site.

If you installed WordPress on your own website (from WordPress.org, which means you’re not running a website through WordPress.com), then go to the plugins and search for “Medium.”

You can also get the plugin here:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/medium/

Install the plugin, and then click “activate.”

2 — Go to your user profile (Users > Your Profile) and find the Medium section.

3 — Get an integration token from your Medium page.

Go to Medium.com and under “settings,” scroll down to integrations. Create a new token and copy it exactly and bring it back to your WordPress site. Paste it into the empty field that says “integration token.”

** If this doesn’t work for you — it didn’t for me the first time — log out of your WordPress site and then log in again. It worked for both websites I installed it on after logging out and back in. **

4 — Select the settings you want from the user profile, (even the publication!). Then go to your individual post and confirm when you publish that you want this piece cross-posted to Medium.

This is what the publications menu looks like within an individual post (left).

You can select whether to notify people about the post, what publication you want to add it to, and whether or not you want cross-links.

 

 

More notes — How to set up styles to work with Medium:

  • The first line of your WordPress post should be an H4 to render as a sub-title on Medium.
  • H1 and H2 styles show up as the large text (T) option in Medium.
  • H3 through H5 styles should up as the small text option in Medium.
  • A blockquote shows up as a small quote in Medium.
  • I haven’t yet figured out how to make a big quote come through in Medium.
  • Once you finish a post in WordPress and press publish, any edits you make to the post won’t update over on the Medium site.

How to publish to both Medium and WordPress at the same time.

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

This was meant to be a private test of the Medium-Wordpress plugin. But I blasted everyone instead.

If you’re looking for how to post to both WordPress and Medium at the same time, check out this article I wrote all about it:

How to Link Your WordPress Website To Also Publish on Medium

30 Ways to Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers: Free List Building Guide

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Here are a few ways to attract and grow your first 1,000 subscribers.

The hardest part of growing your product or business can often be the first part. How do you get your first few subscribers? How do you go from zero to one… to 10, 100, or one thousand?

Before I go any further, I have to reiterate what I say in my classes and other places the most important part of content marketing is creating content that is exceptional — valuable, useful, helpful, and share-worthy. If you don’t have great content, then the strategies below aren’t going to work.

Ask yourself: “Would I share this?” This is part of our metric for whether or not a post is great. We don’t always get it right, but we’re learning as we go. We want to deliver extremely valuable, useful, intriguing, thoughtful content that helps you get more of what you want. If we wouldn’t share it with our friends, then you probably won’t share it with yours.

Once you have great content, however, how do you share it?

How do you get your first 1,000 subscribers? Here are some of the tactics and tools that have worked for us across many of our projects:

1. Tell your friends and colleagues about it.

You would be surprised how many people build something and then… expect people to show up. You have to invite them to come see what you’re doing. Send people personal emails or messages telling them exactly what you’ve built, why you think it’s useful for them, and what you’d like them to do with it.

You probably are connected to at least 100, if not 300 people that you can reach out to and let them know what you’re working on. Don’t spam everyone over and over again, but definitely tell them once about what you’re working on.

The trick? Ask people directly to sign up. Don’t expect them to sign up. Write a note to them that says, “I’m starting a newsletter about [TOPIC] and I think you might enjoy it. I’d love it if you signed up!”

2. Ask your friends and network to share it.

Email them and say, “I’m building this new thing, and I’d love to reach more people who would find this useful. Would you help me spread the word by reaching out to 5-10 people who might find this really helpful?”

Email and referrals are two of the best ways to grow signups. One email from a trusted resource to 5-10 people will generate far more signups than a random Facebook post that most of your network misses.

3. Comment helpfully on related blogs and other posts with similar questions.

Content marketing is about creating relevant conversations, not about shouting from the rooftops. Join the conversation by finding active voices and contributing wisdom and ideas to the community.

4. Become an active member in existing communities doing similar work.

Want people to comment on your blog post? Go comment on other people’s work!

Don’t comment with spam or links back to your site. Be genuinely interested in what other people are doing and ask them about their work and projects. Give them feedback on their work and share tools and tips to help them, not you.

5. Use paid advertising (Google, Facebook).

It’s fairly easy to set up a Facebook or a Google Ad, and for a few hundred bucks, you can drive signups. Make sure that you’re driving traffic to a page that has a big sign-up button. Don’t drive traffic to get more “likes” on your Facebook fan page or to your website generally, however. Drive them exclusively to an offer (that they sign up with by email) or a place to sign up directly.

6. Make subscribing really easy to do.

It always surprises me when I go to a site and I have a ton of trouble finding out how to subscribe. Add a link in your website’s header, footer, sidebar, at the end of blog posts, in a feature bar, in the middle of blog posts, in the author bio, as a pop-up, as a hello-bar, etc. (You don’t have to do all of them, but do at least 4 different places and test which one is getting the most signups.) Add a page exclusively for signing up.

Psst: you can subscribe to this website right here:

[mc4wp_form id=”10463″]

7. Add a link to your social profiles.

Add a link to your newsletter or mailing list across all of your social profiles:

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, Google+, Reddit, etc.

8. Add the site to the footer of your email, and invite people to sign up.

Use every single email you send as an opportunity to tell people about your projects.

9. Build a landing page exclusively for getting subscribers.

Dedicate a landing page exclusively for signups, like The Merchant Home does here:

26-Ways-To-Get-First-1000-Subscribers-The-Merchant-Home-Sign-Up-Newsletter

10. Before you launch have only a landing page, dedicated to getting subscribers.

Put up a landing page before you launch. Create mystery and intrigue. Invite people to sign up before you’re ready. Use LaunchRock or another service to help you build this.

11. Force people to enter their email address before they get any content.

I don’t personally recommend this (in fact, I typically hate it), but it works for many people. I’d be remiss to not include it in this list. Use sparingly. People might hate you because of it.

If you’re more generous, use a smart opt-in that only shows people the banner occasionally, or remembers if they’ve already subscribed. (That *should* be the setting on this website, for example, so if you’re a subscriber, you won’t get spammed with requests to subscribe again.)

12. Add urgency or a deadline.

Tell people what they’ll miss out on if they don’t sign up right now.

13. Host a webinar or a free event.

People love getting free stuff, and we love seeing what’s happening behind the scenes. Set up a free webinar to share what you’re working on (or your “10 best strategies for X”) and have people sign up with an email address to be notified when the webinar launches and when you do similar things in the future.

14. Make the offer really clear. What do they get for subscribing?

Make a compelling offer for what people get by signing up. “Great content” isn’t a compelling offer. What, exactly, are you going to give to them? Why should they spend their precious time with you, and let you into their inbox?

Today’s inboxes are analogous to our living rooms. We don’t let just anyone come in. We invite people in that we want to have a conversation with. Why will they let you in?

15. Give away a free incentive for subscribing.

Make an offer that people can’t refuse. Some of our best signups come from our free offers — I’ve created a free yoga workshop (21 days of stick-figure yoga drawings), a free writing series, and am building an e-book all about the art of asking!

16. Get really clear on who you want to connect with and why.

Why do you want to connect with them? What is their pain point? And why what you have to offer is different, better, and crazy-useful to the people who need it?

17. Add exit intent popups/offers.

SumoMe is a great way to add a smart pop-up to your page, and PopUp Ally is also a great tool. An “exit intent” popup only shows up when the reader demonstrates an intent to leave your page (like moving their cursor to close the window or type in a new URL in the browser). You can “capture” people who are leaving with a bright, colorful exit-intent popup like this:

ScreenFlow

18. Get people to write for you.

Ask people to guest-post and publish with you. A great way to have people share your website is by asking them to contribute to it. Build your audience by utilizing other people’s existing audiences. They’ll share your site when they share links to their work that’s published on your site.

19. Syndicate your content.

Most of the content in the world, wide, web (that big old place) is only seen by a few thousand people, at most. Get your content shared by distributing it broadly. The same piece of content can be used in 10 different places — syndicated as a column, a blog, excerpts on LinkedIn, re-posts on Medium, etc. Content isn’t precious; you can share it in many, many locations.

But make sure you put a sign-up link in each of those locations!

20. Guest post, publish, and write for other people’s websites.

The best way to grow your audience is to play off of other people’s audiences that they’ve already built. Submit awesome content to sites that already have medium-to-big-audiences and watch your traffic grow.

21. Write a monthly column not on your own website, but a well-known website.

HuffPo, Forbes, and many other websites are often looking for monthly columnists and contributors. Build your web presence by writing for someone else — and capturing emails with a freebie on your own website.

22. Join social conversations.

Chime in helpfully in conversations and share your knowledge freely. Respond to and upvote other people’s work. This builds trust and reciprocity and people notice it when other people pay attention to them.

23. Use LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has often one of the best referral sources for our content and for business-related sharing. Use it to syndicate your content. Write blog posts on LinkedIn on a different publishing schedule from your regular content release schedule.

24. Go to conferences

A great way to connect with more people online is to connect with more people offline. A great way to meet a lot of people all at once is to go to a conference that’s about your subject area or business topic.

25. Go to meetup groups

Meet people, meet people, meet people!

26. Do a guerilla marketing campaign.

Sideway chalk up 100 different blocks in your city. Paste hundreds of stickers on the subway. Put fliers up at your local coffeeshop or doctor’s office. Get out, be heard, be seen.

27. Join online events, and join chats (like Twitter Hashtag chats) to meet more people in your target market.

Twitter chats are an awesome way to join a conversation and meet people without leaving your living room.

28. Write an email newsletter.

Give people something new to read every month, or a round-up of your favorite stuff on the web. You don’t have to write original content to have a compelling newsletter; if you link up the top 10 reads each month related to your subject area, that can be a great read. Email marketing is about connecting with people over email; it’s up to you to figure out what way you’ll use email to fit your businesses needs.

29. Do round-up posts with best-of-the-web shouts:

Write up a post with the “Top 10 Best Ways to Grow Your Email List,” and include, say, this post. Then write to each of the people you’re linking up and tell them that you’re including them in your feature article.

30. Make use of websites that share news and products, like Product Hunt or ThunderClap:

Get all of your friends and family onboard to help with a guerilla campaign to share your work in one big wave of energy. Time out when you’re sharing something on ProductHunt and then ask them all to like, upvote, or share the article at the same time. The dedicated attention will help push the new post up in the rankings and likely help get your project more visibility.

(But big warning: don’t link directly to your product, otherwise some websites will track those votes as spam. Hacker News and Product Hunt both dock you credibility if everyone’s voting from the same link. It’s way better to share with your friends that your product is up on the website, but have them search and find it themselves.)

And this brings us back to where we started, which is worth repeating:

31. Write amazing content.

This goes without saying, but can be very hard to do.

Give people a reason to read, use, and share your stuff. It’s worth the time — and it’s what builds your audience for the long-term.