Substack Campfire 2.0 / Save $200 / Ends Tomorrow

Early Bird Ends Tomorrow

The early bird offer for Substack Campfire 2.0 ends tomorrow (Friday). If you sign up before then, you get:

• $200 off

• A free 30-minute coaching call with Tom or I ($250 value) to talk strategy or workshop one of your notes.

This will be the least expensive Substack Campfire ever is.

So, if you’ve been thinking about joining, now is the time!

Substack Campfire 2.0 Details

Yesterday, Tom Kuegler wrote a great post about how Mini Memoirs can help you succeed on Substack. His post encapsulates our #1 lesson learned from Substack Campfire 1.0 in July:

Substack Campfire 1.0 Lesson Learned:
1. Notes are an incredible vehicle to grow on Substack.
2. Sharing your authentic personal story is the #1 way to grow on Notes.

Because of this lesson and our mutual passion for storytelling, Tom and I decided to turn Substack Campfire 2.0 into a Substack Notes Personal Storytelling Incubator.

You can scroll to the bottom of this post to get a summary of the offer, but before that I wanted share a story about why I personally am so excited about storytelling…

Yesterday was a long day.

Work. Kids. Pickleball.

Each dead tired, my wife and I plopped down on the couch around 9:30pm.

One thing led to another. The TV turned on.

She doesn’t like zombie movies much, but I took a chance and floated World War Z. It’s a top-tier zombie movie, I told her. Trust me.

She nodded affirmatively, but wasn’t happy about it.

I'd seen it before. Five times. Maybe more. But it was good to see it new. To see it through her eyes.

My wife and I weren’t alone.

Last night, a significant percent of the human population sat down to watch a movie, read a story, or share a story. Then, they went to bed and spent hours dreaming more stories.

We're a busy bunch, us humans. Serious too.

Yet, we spend probably a quarter of our life immersed in story. 20 years! 20 years of people’s stories on Reddit, This American Life, Chicken Soup for The Soul, or in a religious text. Twenty years of vampires loving humans, while fighting the urge to kill them. Twenty years of Liam Neeson going back to violence to make things right.

We need stories like we need air. No matter how tired. No matter how busy. We find time.

They've done studies on stories. But those twenty years tell me everything I need to know.

When the movie ended, she looked at me. "It wasn't so bad," she said.

I nodded. It wasn't. Not with her there.

This brings me back to Substack Notes

Here’s what I now believe.

People desperately want to share their authentic stories with each other.

But, sharing on other social media platforms is brutal:

• You don’t know who will read your writing.

• Therefore, it’s hard to tell if you’re over-sharing.

• The number of likes is posted right next to your story.

• So, if you get too few likes, the vulnerability inside is deadly.

So, most people play it safe. They share decontextualized hot takes and life hacks based on templates that worked in the past and that anyone else could’ve written.

Many writers don’t like creating the stuff, so they get AI or a ghostwriter to do it. And many readers don’t actually like scrolling social media, but their addicted.

It’s like a gamble pulling a dopamine slot machine lever, knowing it's rigged but unable to stop.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Enter Substack and Substack Campfire.

Substack broadly is filled with creators who appreciate authentic stories of people’s lives more than the same-old hacks. And with the Substack Campfire community, writing stories becomes safe and enjoyable as we develop our skills and find our voice together in community.

Collectively, we have an opportunity to create a more authentic, personal version of social media.

Yes, it sounds pollyanish. But, we truly believe it.

There are two other reasons I love storytelling…

#1. Personal storytelling is how to succeed in an AI era

The first reason is practical.

Over the last year, I’ve spent 1,000+ hours studying, using, and writing about AI. I now believe that AI will get better at collecting, synthesizing, and sharing ideas than almost all humans in the next few years. This will undoubtedly and fundamentally transform the creator economy.

But, and this is a big but, AI will never have its own story.

No matter how good AI is at writing like Hemingway and sharing ideas like Gladwell, there won’t be a human behind the words for readers to connect to. This is important because people love to connect with other people. Take chess for example. AI could beat the best chess players in the world 20 years ago, but human-to-human chess has never been more popular.

In my humble opinion, we creators succeed in the future by fully owning our humanity while collaborating with AI to augment our abilities.

#2. Personal storytelling leads to growth

The second reason is personal.

When we craft our stories, we craft ourselves. When we change how we see ourselves, we change the trajectory of our lives. For example, when we take new perspectives on our life’s stories, our history can become a source of gratitude and resourcefulness rather than a source of victimhood, insecurity, or disappointment.

The most important story we will ever tell is our own.

The most important reader we will ever have is ourselves.

With that said…

Our vision for Substack Campfire 2.0 is to…

Be a storytelling incubator to help you practice the skill of sharing your story on Substack Notes with the support of community and expert feedback.

Our incubator will help you:

• Grow on Notes so you can attract followers and paid subscribers.

• Improve at storytelling so you can use the skill forever in every area of your professional life (speeches, bio, writing, interviews, courses, about page, etc).

• Build up a collection of stories you can anthologize, repurpose, or build upon.

What Substack Campfire 2.0 Includes

#1. Training (monthly mini-courses)

• Interview 10+ great storytellers on Substack

• Create 9 mini-courses with these writers focused on workshopping, not on theory

• Deliver 50+ hours of training about how to write better stories online

#2. Supportive Space To Practice
(3 month-long challenges + yearlong community

• Weekly threads to share your notes with the Substack Campfire community

• Comments and feedback from Tom Kuegler, Kristi Keller, and I

• 3x annual intensive 30-Day Note challenges (daily threads)

Save $200 By Signing Up Now

To summarize what you get…

• Three Note-Writing challenges in 12 months ($1,500 value)

• Dozens of trainings, interviews, and monthly mini courses ($2,500 value)

• Ongoing year-long support from the community ($1,000 value)

That’s a $5,000 value.

Normally the price for an annual membership is $995 per year.

But until this Friday, August 30, you can sign up for $795 per year.

Get $200 off an annual subscription right here…

Or, if you just want access to our library of trainings, weekly threads, and community for one month, sign up on our monthly plan for $195.

To learn about the full offer, visit the What’s Included page.