Ok. I've started the most exciting learning journey of my journalism career. I *NEVER* thought I'd become an 'entrepreneur', now here I am 🤷‍♂️

Planning to take a tonne of notes and turbo-charge @SanityByTanmoy over the next 100 days. Bookmark this 🧵 if you want to follow along. https://twitter.com/toymango/status/1369355235144171529
Okay, here we go. First thing I learnt in our very first class was a phrase @jeremycaplan used that I'd never heard before:

'A potluck of skills'.

Nothing describes the collaborative ethos at the heart of the creator economy better.

'Networking': out.
'Potluck of skills': in.
2. My mentor at the @newmarkjschool Journalism Creators Program is the awesome @CFahrenbach.

Insights from our first chat:

i) Give yourself the permission to experiment.
ii) Don't obsess over 'building a community'. The community already exists. Find it. Address its needs.+
<Cont'd>

iii) Allow yourself to choose the audience segment that you find the most fun.
iv) The more you make your platform about what interests *you*, the more chances you have of succeeding.
v) There's no rule that you have to grow indefinitely.
vi) You make all the rules. +
3. Some excellent follow recommendations if you're interested in the creator economy and mental health.

i) @craigmod
ii) @martingommel
iii) @holstee

+
4. Seat belt on. Here's @jeffjarvis.

Journalism isn't a product. It's a service. Serve a community, liberally speaking, or market, conservatively speaking.

Form follows service.

Social journalism ISN'T filling a product with content. Listen.

Sage advice for @SanityByTanmoy.
+
5. You need multiple revenue streams. You have to subsidise your journalism with work that's not related (read: may not feel good).

Give yourself permission to take up that work.

Thanks Jeff 😭

You may already be too old to change the world. But be bold. And be in service.
+
6. Learn 2 skills from anthropology:

- discipline of observation
- discipline of evidence

Let your community decide your success metrics.

You are building value. Let the community tell you how to measure it. Stop chasing page views. (Can't believe this has to said in 2021.) +
7. "I'll celebrate with you if you create an audience of 2 million people - hallelujah! - but all of you don't have to."

Remember: 1000 true fans is all it takes (apparently).

This too is sexy (in a good way) wisdom now. But still, feels good to have the Jeff Jarvis say it. +
8. Back to the importance of listening.

Listening is critical because it tells you how people describe *themselves*.

As @jeffjarvis says, no one walks around introducing themselves as "Oh hi, I am a millennial."

Demography is not definition. Holy fish that's powerful. +
9. Next, a fantastic tip on asking good questions.

If someone is hesitant about taking the vaccine, ask them about their family health history.

What might have happened that they developed this hesitancy? Listen for that. +
10. When @jeremycaplan introduced @jeffjarvis as "can be provocative", he was referring to Jeff's tendency to drop truth bombs like this:

"Stop thinking 'oh I am doing valuable work. People should pay me'.

'Should' is not a verb that belongs in a business model.'

Ouch. +
11. But of all the things Jeff said today, I am most grateful to him for answering my question about the moral dilemma of using 'evil' platforms for promotion.

"Don't insult the people who are on those platforms by saying you know better."

Should I reinstall Facebook? Hmm. +
Full disclosure: Facebook helps fund the program I'm on. Substack is paying my scholarship. I already don't use FB. Barely use Instagram. And have been in a moral panic about the goings on at Substack and debating options. So yeah, lots of questions still. +
I guess the question is, if you need only 1,000 true fans to build a sustainable business, can you do that without having to depend too much on a social platform? Where else do you find these fans in 2021?
14. Back with more updates from the course.

First up, thanks to a class with @jeffjarvis, I made a hard decision and went back to Facebook after years of avoiding it like the plague. Still feel a little weird using it, but ...

Explained the move here:
https://link.medium.com/riNWStXjdfb 
+
Last week, @jarrettcartersr addressed our class. Jarrett has built a solid business around his newsletter on historically Black colleges in the US.

4 things he stressed:

1. Start with the end in mind. How big do you want your platform to be?

2. What makes you different? +
3. What are your principles of coverage?
4. What does success look like? Impact? Money? Both?

BTW @jarrettcartersr, I can personally vouch for the importance of #3. Got my highest open rate till date (67%) to a post where I described my 16 values 👇🏿
https://sanitybytanmoy.substack.com/p/whos-the-guy-you-just-supported-16
+
The most powerful thing Jarrett said to us could well have been:

"I want you to be healthy, I want you to be happy, and I don't want you to quit.

Learning how to schedule your newsletter and distribute workload is critical to avoid burnout. +
18. We also had a class with @cheriehu42, who's built a truly original and sustainable platform at the intersection of indie music and tech.

Cherie, like every instructor so far, stressed diversifying revenue streams.

Newsletter + freelance + speaking + consulting +++
19. @cheriehu42 has decided to hire part-time help for a couple of key roles, including community editor. I'm increasingly convinced I need to invest in this too.

Question is, how will I pay for it? And how do I trust a new person with @SanityByTanmoy's mission?
21. Today we heard from one of my favourite creators, @FoolishCareers founder @timisiytangco.

Huge insight: People who promote/vibe with the general idea of your platform convert better to paying subscribers than people promote individual pieces of content. 💯+
22. Much fun to hear from @PaulSzoldra, who's built the really cool military news parody platform @DuffelBlog.

Ultimate anti-burnout quote:

"My wife often reminds me, nobody's waiting for your email."

Mic drop. +
Spent 12 hours executing a bunch of things I've learnt from the course so far. Now show me some louuuu, subscribers!!
So I've been working on a new description for @SanityByTanmoy.

It's the first thing you see when you come to sign up. It tells you who I am and what kind of community I'm building.

Happy to unveil something I've come to love. The keyword there is 'radical hope'.

What's that? +
The concept of #radicalhope crudely posits this:

1. The world is going to shit. It always does. Accepting that is the first step towards change.

2. A radically better world is possible, even though we can't fully imagine what it'd look like. +
Radical hope is often invoked in climate activism as the antidote to escapism.

It means engaging what has been numbed – helplessness, anguish, grief, our destructive entitlement.

From the shadows of these feelings is born a better version of humanity. + https://climatepsychologyalliance.org/~cpa/handbook/301-radical-hope
What does radical hope mean for mental health?

Here's what I tell @SanityByTanmoy subscribers in my welcome email:
+
Radical hope for a mental health-friendly world means rejecting 'self-care' BS and leaning into social justice.

It means accepting that kindness is hard in a cruel world, but when we all learn kindness, no single one of us has to bear its brunt.
+ https://sanitybytanmoy.substack.com/p/meet-the-humans-of-the-kindness-economy
Radical hope doesn't mean withdrawing into a lah-di-dah bubble.

It means asking again and again and again:

Just what is the world trying to hide when it asks you to look within?
+
Radical hope in mental health means tracing the obsession with the biomedical model and embracing intersectional thinking.

That's why I'm declaring my own identity upfront. This is the intersection from which I see the world. +
If you want to chat about radical hope and how you can use it in your own work, no matter what your specialisation, I will be on Instagram Live (/tanmoygoswami) Sunday April 11, 5 pm India time, talking to my two followers there 🤭

Hit me up and let's talk. +
You can follow @toymango.
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