Hey all, I sent a short note in last week’s issue but wanted to send a little more detail. Over the past few months, I’ve been doing the inevitable maintenance work that comes with starting a bunch of stuff over a six-year period of working on my own. On an indie path, this kind of work is not fun but ultimately necessary and over time can serve as useful inflection points to inject new energy into our paths.
Nov 1, 2023·edited Nov 1, 2023Liked by Paul Millerd
Too funny your communitty "realization". I first started with a Circle.so community, and was going to just use that as my entire platform, and put my writings up there. Got the entire thing setup and configured, but then I realized it's not my strength to go all-in on community-first. ChatGPT actually helped me with this. I copy/pasted the results of a personality test I use at my "day job" and started asking it questions about Substack vs Circle. It correctly identified because my biggest strengths are "Wonder" and "Innovation" that I would be better at thinking, sharing new ideas, dreaming, and writing (alone!) than I would be at "Galvanizing" and "Enablement" and getting others to do stuff, which is basically community management.
If you think about it like a marketing funnel, my skills are at the top of the funnel, whereas community management is more mid to bottom-funnel in the process of human change.
Your Pathless Path book is inspirational. Once inspired, the community helps to enable change. But you can't stop inspiring people with your own writing, or your community won't have any new members.
Anyways, sounds like a smart move to hire a community manager and focus on your writing.
I plan to write a post about ChatGPT journaling. I started journaling after getting a CEO coach a few years ago, but always used a plain Google doc. I'm testing journaling into GPT and it's quite amazing.
PS - I wish Substack would build out additional (better) community tools so it could all be in one integrated place!
Paul, I love your writing here and your book. Devoured the book in just a few sittings. I'm in the process of a big transition as well, and plan to make writing and becoming a "creator" a big part of it. I setup a Substack for my new "pathless path" adventure, called Hedgian. Like you I prefer a brand separate from myself. But also see the value in owning your name/domain (Paul Millerd). I haven't done it yet but was thinking about setting up another Substack for me, personally, on my domain caseyschorr.com. You could do the same -- Substack can power your root paulmillerd.me domain. Then people could also subscribe to those writings in the same platform as your Pathless Path newsletter. I think you could cross-recommend each publication from the other, as well. Something to think about so you don't have to learn yet-another-platform.
Hope to stay in touch, I think some of my writings will overlap themes of yours but also have a very different spin as our life experiences are pretty different but have a lot of the same motivational undertones.
Very neat to peak behind the curtain, as you're years further along this path than I.
Many of your emotions seem to resonate with the hesitancy and risks I'm thinking of.
Good stuff Paul - always fun to realign.
Awesome development 🔥
Exciting! Feels cohesive and I like the thinking behind it
thanks man - seeing that you saw the "mess" behind the scenes haha
I love this - great moves Paul, a very clear and coherent offering.
Thanks. Your session was a key catalyst
Love to hear it, Paul. And congratulations for knocking off your objectives! :)
Too funny your communitty "realization". I first started with a Circle.so community, and was going to just use that as my entire platform, and put my writings up there. Got the entire thing setup and configured, but then I realized it's not my strength to go all-in on community-first. ChatGPT actually helped me with this. I copy/pasted the results of a personality test I use at my "day job" and started asking it questions about Substack vs Circle. It correctly identified because my biggest strengths are "Wonder" and "Innovation" that I would be better at thinking, sharing new ideas, dreaming, and writing (alone!) than I would be at "Galvanizing" and "Enablement" and getting others to do stuff, which is basically community management.
If you think about it like a marketing funnel, my skills are at the top of the funnel, whereas community management is more mid to bottom-funnel in the process of human change.
Your Pathless Path book is inspirational. Once inspired, the community helps to enable change. But you can't stop inspiring people with your own writing, or your community won't have any new members.
Anyways, sounds like a smart move to hire a community manager and focus on your writing.
I plan to write a post about ChatGPT journaling. I started journaling after getting a CEO coach a few years ago, but always used a plain Google doc. I'm testing journaling into GPT and it's quite amazing.
PS - I wish Substack would build out additional (better) community tools so it could all be in one integrated place!
Paul, I love your writing here and your book. Devoured the book in just a few sittings. I'm in the process of a big transition as well, and plan to make writing and becoming a "creator" a big part of it. I setup a Substack for my new "pathless path" adventure, called Hedgian. Like you I prefer a brand separate from myself. But also see the value in owning your name/domain (Paul Millerd). I haven't done it yet but was thinking about setting up another Substack for me, personally, on my domain caseyschorr.com. You could do the same -- Substack can power your root paulmillerd.me domain. Then people could also subscribe to those writings in the same platform as your Pathless Path newsletter. I think you could cross-recommend each publication from the other, as well. Something to think about so you don't have to learn yet-another-platform.
Hope to stay in touch, I think some of my writings will overlap themes of yours but also have a very different spin as our life experiences are pretty different but have a lot of the same motivational undertones.