Transcription
Over the next 3 months, I'm going to build a 100K per month writing community from scratch, while also documenting the entire build process here on my YouTube channel. Now, this is not going to be some highly edited, dopamine-intense series. If you're looking for that, you can keep doom-scrolling YouTube. But for those who want high-density, actionable information and want to actually apply it to their business, keep watching. Because what we're going to cover in this video is an overview of what we're building, who it's for, why we're building it, and where it's going to fall in our portfolio. Then we're going to talk about the four-phase build order game plan I'm going to implement, uh, while also talking about how I created that game plan. Then we're going to go over the initial nine-question survey I'm going to send to people to gather information on what they'd find valuable, plus the one-on-one feedback call where I'm going to know basically everything I need to build based on what people actually want and what they're actually struggling with. And then I'll finish with what I plan on covering in the following week's videos. So let's get right into it.
All right, starting with an overview of what we're building—basically a rapid fire of frequently asked questions so you can kind of have an understanding of where we're going. So what is it? We're building a $99 per month digital writing school community that combines elements of education, community, and mentorship. And I'll touch on those three pillars throughout the video. Think of it this way: it's basically a Choose Your Own Adventure where you have a monthly membership, and every month you receive a token to unlock a new educational course. And we help you understand what the most valuable or highest impact educational course you could unlock next based on, uh, where you're at on your writing journey. So we're going to have kind of a reverse-engineered game plan or roadmap where we think anyone who's writing or creating on the internet should have these seven or eight things. And based on the ones that you have or the ones you don't have and what you're struggling with, we will guide you to the next thing to unlock. On top of that, we'll have education. Um, on top of the education, we'll have community elements like swag, group calls on specific topics, expert Q&As, presentations, writing sprints, template unlocks, basically, and eventually in-person events, which I'm excited about, probably the most of this entire thing. So it's education, but then things that complement that education, and that's what we're building.
So why are we building this? Well, it's important to tell the whole story to see how we got here. It's 2025 at the time of filming this, and back in 2022 and 2023, we had the Captain's Table. This was part of our writing portfolio that we sold on the back of Ship 30 for 30, and it was basically an ongoing writing community. So I'm not going to do a full breakdown of all the different offers we have that make up our portfolio. I've made other videos on this channel to talk about it, but high level, Ship 30 for 30 is a 30-day writing challenge for beginners who want to start writing online. And then we had something called the Captain's Table on the back of that for anyone who wanted to keep writing. Now, at the time, we never really got that community right for a few reasons. First, Ship 30 for 30 was live, and we ran it every 8 to 12 weeks, so we would have some CT members—I'm going to use CT to abbreviate Captain's Table—some would repeat Ship 30, and so they could go do the live cohort. But for others who had kind of moved on from the beginner stages, they were kind of out of things to do, and we weren't able to give them the attention because it was only me, Cole, and Daniel, uh, from our original team, uh, we were running both operations, and there was just, just a limited amount of bandwidth that we could reasonably give, um, to both the hundreds of new people who came into Ship 30 and then the ton of people who were also part of the Captain's Table. Now this was a problem then; it wouldn't be a problem now, but it was mainly a skill issue that we didn't have the ability to hire and train people to run the community on our behalf. So we basically said, "Well, we don't have enough time to do this, and we don't really know how to hire people," because this was—I was still working at BlackRock at the time; I was not even a full-time entrepreneur yet—so I didn't have any of these skills. And so we said, "Well, if we can't do both, we have to kind of pick one," and we tried to do both, but we just couldn't do a good enough job with either. And so we, we'll talk about how we kind of transition from that, but again, this was compounded by the fact that we were going back and forth, back and forth, trying to market a new Ship 30 cohort while also running a community; we were just split attention-wise. We had too small of a team. On top of that, we could not keep up with the pace of ongoing educational product creation to keep the community happy. So you know, when you, when you start a community—and we're going to talk a ton about community engineering in the course of this series—but you don't want to throw all the education at them at once; you want to kind of unlock things as they go, and that's going to be a big pillar of what we end up building. We could not keep pace with what our customers needed from a new perspective, like what are the new things that they need to go and build, because we, again, would pivot our attention back to Ship 30 too often. And ultimately, uh, we found something more lucrative in terms of—it was going to take the same amount of time as it took to run the Captain's Table, but make us far more money. And so we ultimately had, had to kind of pick, "Where do we want to apply a lot of this attention?" So all that to be said, um, this was going to take the same amount of effort to build up, like I said, but had high—higher, much higher return on our attention. So we ultimately shut the Captain's Table down in mid-2023 to free up the resource to give PGA our full attention. If you don't know what PGA is, it's our premium ghostwriting academy; it's a group coaching program that helps freelancers become ghostwriters. Again, I've talked, I've talked a ton about that on our channel, so I'm not going to give a big deep dive. So basically, we shut the Captain's Table down for multiple reasons that now we have the ability to do at such a higher level based on all the skills we've built over the last few years.
So since then, PGA has grown over 1,200 students. We've also taken Ship 30, turned it from live to async to give more resources to PGA, and I've spent the last two years hiring a full-time team of 28 people to grow this main business for us. Now this created a problem because unless you were a ghostwriter, if you took, or unless you wanted to become a ghostwriter, if you took Ship 30 and then you wanted to write for yourself, we no longer had much to offer you. Like we've launched a new digital product every Black Friday for the last two years, but other than that, we've had a huge segment of our customer base who want to keep learning from us, want to stay engaged in our ecosystem, but they're not interested in becoming ghostwriters. And we said, "You know, we don't have bandwidth to do both of these; we have to pick one; we had to go build it," and we built PGA to—at this point, I have full-time department heads in every single, um, area of the business. Now that's going to let us go and build this other community while also, like, kind of speed-running all the things we struggled with in the past because I built those skills inside PGA. So like I said, this brings us to today. We get to take another crack at this community with more skills, more time, and importantly, a ton of education that's already built that we can kind of repackage and reslice to put inside that community. So that's basically why we're building this and why we're choosing to do it now, um, summarized in a handful of different points.
So where's this going to go in our funnel? Two main places: first, it's going to be sold throughout Ship 30 for 30's async product, positioned as, "Hey, you started to write now, um, for 30 days, but writing on the internet is a lifelong adventure, and if you want ongoing templates and support and education and community, this is the best place to go." We currently have a digital product sold on the back of our other digital product, uh, and we think that that it struggles to really convert at a high level because it's basically—it, it's not positioned as like more of the same thing; it's kind of different. But a community would say, "This is more of what you're already doing, but you're going to unlock new things, and you're going to do it with people on a continuous basis." So rather than different, we want continuity; we want Ship 30, but just like a more streamlined community-based version. So that'll be the first place, and that will replace Fullstack Rider. And then second, for anyone running an email list or for anyone on our email list that has told us through surveys—because you know, we have 150,000 people, 200,000 people on our email list at this point—and anyone who's told, told us they're already writing online and they're not interested in purchasing Ship 30, we now have an offer for them. It's like, "Hey, you shouldn't start with our beginner course; you should go into the digital writing school and unlock the higher, more advanced, uh, course and education materials that will actually serve you on your journey." So those are the two main places where we kind of have a, a gap in our value ladder that we think our customers are going to actually love.
And then how are we going to promote this—Grammatically, how are we going to promote this? First, primarily to our email list of people who've not bought Ship 30, but the long-term vision is to have an army of affiliate writers who recommend us as the go-to place for learning digital writing. And they can also come give guest talks, even have their own modules that we could comp them for. The long-term vision is to have something that is far bigger than us in terms of—we are not the faces of it; we have people who fulfill for us; we have people who market for us, and we create an asset that can run on its own. With PGA, we've built an incredible community with an incredible team, but at the end of the day, me and my co-founder, my co-founder and I, we both have to continue to market, and as much as we like doing that, I think the long-term vision of any business is to have one that can grow on its own, independent of your efforts. And right now, it's still the most lucrative thing for us to do, so we're going to keep spending our time there. But this community, we really want to build from the end in mind, or with the end in mind, saying we want marketing and fulfillment done by other people who have upside in trajectory within the company, um, that build something far, far, far bigger than us.
All right, so how are we gonna actually build this thing? Well, there's going to be three phases that I've broken out into: Ideate, Validate, Accelerate, and Levitate. I just love when things kind of rhyme like that, and it looks nice, so that was the main thing. But really, what we've tried to do here is sequence out all of the outcomes and deliverables that must be built to go from idea to 100K per month community. So getting into the nitty-gritty of all of these is kind of beyond the scope of this video, but I'm going to document the building of every single one of these on this channel. Because going—if you're interested in launching a community of any kind, I think there's going to be a ton of actionable, just like golden nuggets that you could apply to yours, and that is the goal with this series. So all of these deliverables are all the different parts that must be built out, starting with the end in mind of having 100K per month. And so if I was just going to rapid-fire through these, everything in Ideate is all kind of brainstorming, right? It's build out this document; it's build out a survey; it's build V1s of the, the pillars of the community, the ideal avatar, the course modules, the community name, all of that that basically has to happen for us to even, you know, sell something. Then we're going to Validate, which is all about getting from $0 to 10K per month, making our first sale, having an onboarding survey, building a lightweight landing page, building the token unlock system, building V1s of everything that is actually going into the fulfillment of the community. And I'm going to talk about, about the survey that I built and how that's going to imp—like, kind of impact my build order from here, because this was just a rough draft. Then from Accelerate, it's anything from having 100 members to a, to a thousand members, and this is basically all the additional things that tweak the marketing funnel to make sure we're, we're getting the most use out of this, um, like abandon cart sequence, hiring ahead of affiliates, building a better landing page, having a, you know, higher-ticket part of it, or you could pay for the entire year; that's going to pull forth some revenue, build in, you know, recommended software with discounts and things like that, um, but I'm going to skip kind of this Accelerate and Levitate because this is so—it's not so far away, but it's at a different stage of the journey that I don't think is irrelevant. What's more important is how I put this build—this document, or this build sprint document, together. And this is the most useful part for anyone watching this video that's looking to build something; this is how I think about creating this order. So first, I brainstormed everything that I could think about, um, I don't have the picture of my actual journal here, but basically, I took a handwritten journal, wrote out every s—every single thing that I could think about in like a free-flowing 20-minute brain dump. Then I got extremely clear on the outcomes that were implied with each bullet point. So anything that is its own mini-project I put here, right? So build checkout page versus V1 of curriculum, like that falls under build the product, but I wanted to get more specific because, you know, build 100K a month community, that's a very difficult task, but all of these things are very specific, tangible deliverables that kind of chunk down the build order process into a much easier, more digestible way that kind of kills the, like, productive procrastination of planning too much, uh, or just procrastination in general, where if it's such a big project, you're not going to work on it. Then, uh, I grouped each outcome into phases zero through phases zero through three. This cold brew is absolutely jet fuel, which is probably why I'm talking so fast, but anyway, we'll keep rolling. So I group these into phases zero through three in a very intentional way, which is—anything that falls in a later phase is dependent on something above it happening. And so, for example, like hiring a head of affiliate partnerships, that comes way further down the line than any of this other—build out the V1, because I'm not going to hire a head of affiliates for something that doesn't even exist, right? I'm not going to start launching retargeting ads to people who are interested in before I've actually sold anything. So it's so tempting to think like, "Oh, I got to go do all these things," but unless you put them in a sequential order that you have to go and build, then it's kind of a waste of time because otherwise you're going to work on things that depend on something earlier, and it's going to take you much longer in the long run. From here, um, I realized that a lot of people would love to share the build process with me. And so rather than sell the sawdust of building this community as a product, I spun up a simple landing page, email, and checkout page, uh, that sold the behind-the-scenes of this. So I talk about that at the end of this video, but basically, if you're interested in a more granular talk to me on a daily basis, deep dive into how I'm thinking about building this community, there's going to be a link in the description where you can check out our community; it's a Telegram group; all the information is there. It's only for people who are serious about building something like this; it's only 99 bucks a month, and I think you'll get a lot of value. So anyway, this is now a win-win where I have a small group community of people—I see eventually being members—that I can get feedback, talk to, get survey data, all that kind of stuff. And those 100 spots are filled up now, but we might expand it, so I think it's probably a waitlist if you're watching this video right now. But anyway, information is going to be further down in the description in that first link. So now I have extra accountability to build all these other parts because I have people watching me, and that's why I'm making this channel or this video series as well, because it makes it a lot more fun and, and I think over the long term, I want to have more documented journey assets. And that's the main outcome I'm looking to create is—once we have this 100K per month community, I can show other people, people that, "Hey, this started from zero on nothing but a Google Doc," um, and we've clearly come a long way from there. So again, if you're interested in joining that community, check out the first link.
Now, from here, I am going to start with a nine-question survey and one-on-one feedback call to gather as much tactical, granular, just like nitty-gritty, boots-on-the-ground, talking-to-customers information as I can. And that is going to allow me to avoid a lot of mistakes. So I'm going to talk about how I've built this survey and then why I'm asking some of these questions and what I'll do with it in the long, in the long run. So the goal with my first—or the survey—is to figure out, first, what are people paying for, like right now. If you're watching this, you might be a member of a couple communities; I want to know what those are, and I want to know what you like and dislike about them. Because my—I'm going to talk a ton about the different frameworks I'm using to build this, but the main POV here is—people churn from communities not from a, like, not enough information; it's usually too much information and lack of direction. And so I'm going to try and find all these friction points of what people dislike about what they currently have and then build that with the kind of end in mind of avoiding those frustrations or frictions or annoyances that actually lead to the churn, where most people think instead they need to go do more, more, more; it's actually less but better. And I want to understand, like, what those actual things are that they don't like. And then I'm going to kind of just ask, "Where are you in your digital writing journey?" Because if you were going to join the digital writing school, when you join, you're going to have a one-on-one onboarding call, very similar to the one that I'm going to hold with all the members of my community and the people who are interested, and basically ask, "Where are you?" And we need to send you in the right direction. And so I want to kind of simulate some of those conversations, and that's going to allow us to build the right tracks and right roadmap such that when people do join, they're not overwhelmed with a zillion things that they could go and do; it's a very tight—we think that you should go do this thing, then this thing, then this thing; here are the calls that you should attend that are going to be relevant to that, and here are the educational assets that you should go unlock. So, so running through the different questions—I just sent this survey now, so I've started to get some data—basically, "What type of business do you run?" And so this is going to be things like agency services, digital product seller, preneur, um, kind of a suite of digital or like portfolio of writing businesses, kind of like we, or businesses in general, kind of like we run, um, I can't remember the other ones there, but basically, I just want to know, like, "What are you trying to build right now?" Because right away, that's going to—you're going to have a very different approach to what your writing should do, um, based on what you're trying to build, like the way you build an agency with LinkedIn marketing is way different than you build a digital products business. And so I want to know right away, um, where you're at there. I want to know what products you've bought from ours, uh, just to know, you know, what you kind of do have versus don't and why you bought those things because that will influence our marketing in the future. I want to know if you're actively writing, what platforms you're writing on. And so just to pause for a second, this is a simulated onboarding survey for the eventual digital writing school that we will have. I'm asking this to people ahead of time because I want to know, like, what are the most important things for us to go and build. We can't build everything at once, but if we see commonalities of what we know, like the—if there's 10 roadmaps that someone could take, the first seven, eight, or nine of them, uh, are already built out because they're more common, and I want to just know that from the beginning. And my POV in asking this is—if someone gave me all this information, could I consult with them on, like, a quarterly basis, saying, "Hey, here are the five things that I, I think you need to go work on building; here's the most important one; go work on that, and we'll meet back next month." I want to try and take, like, this one-on-one consultative approach and then scale it down to just a community, but still have an onboarding call where they're getting that, like, lightweight personal touch. Because most people in this kind of world, they know all the things that they could go and build, but they don't know exactly what order they should build them in and what's going to actually have the highest impact. And because we built so many different types of writing businesses, we understand, "Hey, if you're building an agency, you actually need to start here, here; if you're building a, you know, group coaching program, you need to start here; if you're building a SaaS, you need to start here." And understanding that will go a long way for us. These are the nitty-gritty questions; if you're looking to kind of ask similar questions, I highly recommend the book *The Mom Test*; it's all about how to talk to your customers, and that's where I got some of these from. But I'm basically asking, "What are you paying for right now," um, the name of the community, all that; "What are your favorite parts," so I can build that in mind; "What are the frustrating parts," so I can avoid that; and then basically, "What would you need to receive to make this valuable," so I can have in their words, like, what are the, um, what are the valuable parts that if they were promised from the beginning, it'd be an absolute home run. Then I want to know if they could sit down with me, what questions they'd have, because if, you know, if you got one question with me and you asked it, I know that there's probably a ton of other people with very similar problems, and I'm going to build a product that helps solve that problem proactively so I don't have to be the one to answer it. And then again, "Anything else you want to share?" So this survey—I will have so much data from the people already in our Telegram community and then also people as they come in—with what direction to send them in. From here, I'm going to have 15-minute onboarding calls with everyone who's—or not everyone; I'm going to try and do as many as I can, but that's just a lot, and I think I'll learn enough within like the first 20 or 30 to really understand what would make this a home run community, while also—
Avoiding all the things that would make it like an instant churn, so that was kind of a rapid fire: here's everything we're building, why we're building it, what's going on, how I plan on it. Powered by this really strong cold brew.
Over the next couple weeks and months, I'm going to build a more in-depth talk about the Mr. and the updates we're on; some tactical tips on community building, onboarding, retention—everything that I'm learning that you could apply to your business. And then anything requested in the comments, so please feel free to leave a comment with any questions.
Last but not least, if you want a more in-depth behind the scenes on this entire process, check the first link in the description: join the Digital Air Community. It's a 99 bucks Telegram group; uh, we do a lot of cool stuff in there that I'm going to talk about—more exclusive, more behind the scenes, more in-depth than I do on this channel. So that's the first link.
Other than that, if you like this type content, smash the like button, subscribe, and I'll see you next week. Peace.