When is the right time to write a daily email?
It's a damn good question. Because I agree with the plain logic that NOW is the right time to write a daily email.
I just object to the idea on instinct.
The way the world works at the moment, people are vastly more likely to connect with you, build a relationship, get something valuable from you to help themselves, and ultimately (if it's your goal) to build a business, if you are in their lives a little bit every day.
If they get to know you a little bit every day.
If they get to look forward to you a little bit every day.
But on the flip side of the coin,
Does it make sense to put all the time effort and resources into making that happen well if it's taking away from other things I'm doing ... from myself?
If I don’t find joy in the process?
Many would argue yes because it's an asset and a momentum that builds over time. You email daily and don't expect anything for a YEAR and you'll probably be surprised.
HOWEVER
I’m not emailing in a vacuum.
There are other important components of a system like that which are necessary in order for emailing daily to effectively get me what I want.
Not the least of which is my disposition and enjoyment with the process itself.
If I'm not enjoying it, there's no WAY I can make it a positive contribution to anyone.
And that's just one point among others which led me to end The Daily Email here on Growing Trees
(The archive if you’re interested)
I might look at this and ask, what made this a situation which I didn't enjoy? After all, in my previous testing of this (when I had a private list) I emailed daily for over 6 months and almost never felt any negative draw on myself. It was all positive and quite frankly easy to do.
I ended because I recognized I'd split my focus and resources too much.
Which brought me back here.
To this publication.
And then, in September of last year I decided to test it out again ... only this time directly on Substack.
A daily "email." (Substack is less “email” and more “emailed article” in my personal opinion)
I was curious.
I had two dynamics at play ... one, I wanted to be writing more on Growing Trees, and two I was digging for ways to support the growth of The Guardian Academy and The Arena. My theory was that if I could establish a daily connection with people who were largely coming to me from TGA, I could feed two birds with one biscuit.
If I did this here, would it contribute positively there?
The short answer is,
Yes. It did.
HOWEVER
Not in a way that was effective enough to justify what I'm about to share.
I stopped because I had the sudden realization that I needed to.
I wasn't sure in the moment,
But on reflection I realized ultimately that this path ended up being a distraction from an original plan I had not fully realized.
In some ways I was actually seeking relief by doing more, rather than continuing to focus on fundamentals and laying out the original plan I'd designed (which, regardless of how it impacts in the now is filled with such evergreen perspective as to be key building blocks of wherever I take this).
I had the argument that the daily writing as I was doing it would contribute positively to the rest of my writing.
I do like the way the daily email - as I practiced it - made me think about certain writing dynamics more strategically, tactically, and intentionally. Like Tension. Like showing not telling. Like letting go and allowing some things to be unrevealed unanswered. In my lengthier writing I do have a tendency to want to explain everything, and I think there's a balance to be found in what is revealed and not revealed.
That daily dynamic forces me to think creatively about very small things. When it really does feel like the thing I want to be doing, it's so easy for me to find a very tiny little moment and stretch it out ...
Here's an example:
It's early morning and I've just dragged myself out of bed
I haven't had my coffee yet.
Bleary eyed, I fumble through the kitchen.
I drop the loaf as I gather two slices of bread ...
The mustard farts all over the counter
It's almost empty.
The turkey tries to jump onto the floor as I eye the cheese suspiciously.
It behaves.
Lettuce on, sandwich in the bag ... I breathe a sigh of relief,
And grab the chips.
Almost done making kid lunch # 1
and
SNAAPPCRRUUNNNCH
My eyes nearly POP out of my head, heart thumping.
I look down in my hands,
At the absolutely EXPLODED chip clip.
No,
Not the chips themselves
The god damned CLIP itself exploded in my hands.
All I did was press it to open ... and the handles SHATTERED into about a billion pieces (it was 2 pieces) completely shredding a hole in my consciousness as I stare at the now open and clearly impossible to seal bag of chips.
What the hell am I supposed to do now?
I look at my hands.
Did I like ... hulk out on making this lunch?
Or are these chip clips just the cheapest POS products?
I pick up another,
Clip it open.
SNAP
Oh.
Yea.
They suck.
Why is everything so cheaply made these days?
{aaaaaand segue into something else}
THERE. Just for the fun of it, wrote that little bit.
An entire thing there which has the singular role of extracting that one frustrating instant moment when the cheap plastic chip clip broke in my hands.
And then in that "daily email" format my second challenge is bridging a story like that into some kind of insight or action.
Something else for you to dig into, do, and on occasion go buy.
I like that challenge.
But I think the problem I have with it right now is my work - at the moment - feels disparate.
It seems more like I'm trying to pull together a number of related but separate pieces in a net bag thrown over my shoulder, and what I really want to be doing is building a consistent breathing world which you can inhabit, if it interests you - ideally getting something valuable and useful from being in that world.
And as yet I still can't quite tell exactly what that world is.
I think for me the main problem is just that I haven't fully allowed the garden to grow. I seeded all those ideas and my work keeps calling me to nurture and prune them until the right things appear - yet out of the complexity of heading towards a specific goal, I've avoided doing that.
Then there's also the problem of Substack itself .... for all it's benefits - and I do think there are a lot of benefits here - there's a lack of something magical which I can get by enshrining my "world" behind the secret doors I establish (in a private email list).
There's something to the "enshittification" of content online and how every "substack" is just "a substack" and they all look alike.
Additionally, while Substack's networking features are powerful they also can come with their own problems ... sure you might get a lot of subscribers, but how much are they really paying attention? I see people subscribed to hundreds of Substacks and wonder ... is that just causing a new problem?
How much long form content can you really meaningfully consume?
That being said - I know there's a path to leverage the strengths of Substack and get the right people connected, into your stuff in a meaningful way (we're doing that with The Guardian Academy, and we have partners doing this successfully as well).
I just wonder if the way I envision building things for myself really works here.
The alternative being the magical hidden world behind the door of an email list.
Theres something dynamically magical about that private little world, where you HAVE to walk through the door I open to get into it.
You have to follow the dress code.
You have to say the secret passphrase.
And within that world its my playground and I know ONLY the people who've danced my dance get to hear what I have to say. There's uniqueness and magic in that.
My instinct says, make a world around me.
A little space where I share and do work around what I do, and where those who are interested can benefit from that.
It's not about having an email list, or a newsletter, or publishing this or that ...
It's about the world I make.
I've known this for a time, I just didn't realize I was struggling with the dynamics moving in that direction as I got deeper into my work with The Guardian Academy, which has inarguable colored my perspectives and my world in a distinct and vivid way - and which has shaped my time and efforts significantly.
What is the answer?
As always,
Slow down. Take small steps.
What I have in front of me for THIS publication (Growing Trees) is a large list of content I've started and which fits my original "pillars" strategy.
It seems like the right thing to do for me to bring that back and keep that ball rolling.
If/when I do make that "world," I'll need an anchor point. Something I can focus myself and others towards a specific purpose - solving a problem, moving people closer to solving theirs and getting them what they want, most likely focused on some specific strategic or tactical application - because those are the things which narrow an audience and make copy and language effective.
Something tangible for the outside world to connect with before bridging into the deeper why.
As of now it looks like that will be email related, due to my impending book "R3 for Email."
However ...
It may be possible to make a world around my ethos.
This is something I'm only just consciously exploring, so I don't feel comfortable elaborating on it. What I'll most likely do is try to put my new ideas and theories into action (Engage the Field), and then when the pieces work and fit together ... I'll share about them here.
So,
That's where it's at.
I'm going to keep "the daily email" section on this substack, but for now I'm not going to bring back the daily email. I'm going to go back to the 3 pillars and all my seeded writing ideas to establish a regular publication of all that content.
(Still, likely playing off The Guardian Academy and Man Bites Dog, linking into stuff happening on those publications)