Bernie J Mitchell

Engaging People in coworking since 2010

Podcasts

Why I Am No Longer Talking To People About Blogging

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What is this about Bernie?

So we are building the Coalescent Podcast Network, and I thought I’d write about how we are doing that as it is going to come with some joy and pain and a lot of the agony we will have I’m sure you will too.

I get asked a lot of questions about content marketing every week, at Write Club, Podcast Meet Up, Coworking Assembly and with people who hand over their hard-won money for my advice and expertise.

For as long as I can remember I’ve loved, communication, spreading the word, getting people to come to things, writing and of course podcasting.

When I was very young, I’d play out radio shows with my teddy bears. When I was a teenager, I’d repeat everything that ‘Steve Wright in the Afternoon‘ on Radio One did, by the time I was older and working on a youth project we’d re-enact everything from TFI Friday,

From the moment they were in the cinema, I could recite whole sections from Robin Williams in Good Morning Vietnam and Christian Slater in Pump Up The Volume.

It’s so easy to create content these days!

First, it is now accessible; it’s simple to use your iPhone and record a podcast and send it to the internet.

It’s not.

Of course, you can do that, and it is easy, but that is like saying put all the stuff for making bread in a bowl, mix it up and stick it in the oven.
There is so much more to it than that, it’s is not a dark art, and 80% of it is the guts to do it.

I was lucky, somehow the second podcast I ever did was with Seth Godin, and the fifth one was with Marcus Sheridan in 2012 after that it was up and down.

I’d been thinking about it for ages before then I even hit record.

Since 2012, I’ve got to work with and learn from some of the best people in the business.

2019 had to be the time when I sorted out the podcast network, so I’ll begin here.
I had an idea for a podcast network when Rainmaker FM launched. I listened intently and worked out how to do it, they had resources, and I had, well, not many.

Calling in a little help

Then in 2018, I did a coaching course with Jessica Abel the TLDR is that in one of our one to one coaching calls she nearly passed out when I explained how my communications world worked and I almost fainted telling it.

She did not have to say much, I instantly knew I was full of shit, and over complicating it, I submitted and answered her questions and listened to her advice.

Jessica’s advice was double down on the podcast network.

It took another year before I was able to do that, I’ve always had other people contributing to the podcast network, and I love them all dearly, they are still close to me, and they know they are welcome to jump back in any time.
But people have to be able to put food on the table at home, especially if they have children.

So we had to find a way to make it work.

The podcast was half in my head, and the other half was online, and half of that half was knocking my Google Drive and no good to anyone.

(The weekly European Coworking Assembly progress calls were getting super awkward when it got to my bit about the Coworking Values podcast.)

The Oliver walked into my life, he was working in my mate Lena’s agency, and I managed to entice him over to Mainyard once a week to work on the Coalescent Podcast Network.

We gave the podcast one whole day a week and soon were publishing every week.

It took two whole days of work to reconnect everything, set up MailChimp, work out the template in Canva, find the audio files in my iCloud and Google Drive.

Tools like Otter for show notes and the new Guttenburg blocks in WordPress helped speed things up.

More later…. 

My Coworking Moonshot (and the stars look very different today)

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(Image Credit Raymond Carrillo Flickr)

So What Is A Moonshot Bernie?

A few weeks ago, my mate Cat Johnson (the other best coworking content advisor in the world) asked me what my Coworking Moonshot was.

The trouble with Cat asking me a question is I need to think about the answer, saying ‘to help people’ would not have cut it.

I know this as we used to podcast together on the Write Club Podcast on Coalescent Network (formerly Ouishare Radio) with Trevor.

Listen to this episode to check in with One Million Words, where we speak about 750 Words.com, and of course, Cat has some pearls of wordy wisdom to share.

Cat shared her Moonshot in this post on her website and in this video with Jared Brick from Brick House Media.

So Where Is Your Moonshot Bernie?

I do have a Moonshot, but I’m going to set it up with a few places and events where I’ve looked for it since I got into coworking.

I’ve been working in, on and around coworking spaces since 2010.

At the very early days of Innovation Warehouse 2010, The Studio 2018, @Work Hubs 2013, Mainyard Studios 2013 I was in there taking part, learning and watching.

In all of these places, I saw first hand the euphoria, joy, agony and confusion that comes with running a coworking space, indeed any business.

These photos below are the first few of us who got to work in the Innovation Warehouse, the next year, we ran Tedx Smithfield in that room, and I discovered the Sharing Economy.

Coworking, the next big thing?

From 2011 I took part in a Meet Up for freelancers called KindredHQ, the format was we met in a new coworking space for a few hours every weekday.

KindredHQ drew to a close in 2015, but it will always have a place in my heart, is where I got deadly serious about coworking and freelancing.

It is where I stopped being a pretentious wan-a-be entrepreneur and put on my big person pants about being a freelancer.

Back 2011 in seemed like there was a new coworking space opening every 11 seconds in London.

Silicon Drinkabout was about to blow up the and doomed sharing economy goldrush was picking up where social media goldrush had let go.

With KindredHQ, I saw a lot of the early days of coworking in London, the promise of the community for people seeking connection with their work.
Back in these days, ‘Consultant’ was still code for ‘unemployed’ and ‘Freelancer’ meant you were ‘underpaid’.

Somewhere around 2010, I was sitting in Alfred Place with Tom Ball; he’d recently sold his company ‘Conagc’ and asked him what he was going to do now.

He said, ‘We’re going to look for the next big thing.’ And that turned out to be coworking; Tom was a firm supporter of KindredHQ as was Matt Perkins from FreeAgent.

This video below is from the crowdfunding campaign of 2014, listen to the way people talk about networks, community, coworking and the future of work.

Listening to the community

In 2014 I first went to the Coworking Europe Conference in Lisbon and was hooked (see the video below on how that turned out) I plugged in and have never stopped listening.

In 2017 I became an active participant of the European Coworking Assembly team got deeply involved in the Inclusion, Diversity and Accessibility project and things like European Freelancers Week.

I’ve developed a personal frustration with people ‘jumping on the coworking bandwagon’.

At one conference in 2015 on I had an argument with someone from London about calling their space ‘something coworking’ and were offering ‘affordable office space’ to freelancers and small businesses.

They were offering affordable office space, compared with what you’d pay next door in the Salesforce Tower but it was just that, office space, not coworking.

Well, not my version of coworking.

And if you’d asked me in 2015 what my version of coworking was you’d get a real Polly Anna type fuzzy answer, I did not know what it was or how it worked, I set about paying deeper attention.

Since then, I’ve been on a regular call with both coworking and marketing peers every week, I’m always listening to what people are working on, where they are going and where their challenges are.

Listening to the community

I’m part of the Content Marketing Academy, which runs on weekly and monthly sessions about content marketing and building a business.

This keeps me in shape with marketing and communications, it is also the place to get peer to peer coaching and accountability on how to run my own freelance business.

And every week I’m talking with my peers either in the London Coworking Assembly or on our weekly call for the European Coworking Assembly crew for our projects, events and community around Europe.

One of the places I listen most intently is when I’m podcasting with people on Coalescent Network the show that would be most relevant to people reading this post is the Coworking Values Podcast.

My conclusion is that the coworking you see in the media is not the same as what happens in real life, and sadly people seem to think that is ok.

Look on Instagram to see who is paying for adverts vs who has real people doing real things in their workspace.

Coworking Movement vs Coworking Industry

A few weeks ago I podcasted with Ashley and we deep-dived on the Coworking Movement vs Coworking Industry – you can listen here.

To be blunt this is the closest I’d got to direct answer about why we turn a blind eye to so many things in coworking, particularly at conferences.

What do I mean by that?

Over the last couple of years, I’ve deliberately asked prominent people about where they see the divides, what they think is wrong with the way ‘coworking’ (in all of its ways) is developing and shaping society.
Too many people have given me lame-ass answers about, ‘that is just the way it is’ or dodged the question altogether, it’s like they think all their business will dry up if they stand up for what they believe in.
The other thing I deliberately don’t do is mention WeWork, you can lose a whole day with people bitching about WeWork.
My heart did stop when my beloved Meet-Up ‘allowed’ themselves to get brought by WeWork.
Anyway.
See what I mean?
One of my main points was the number of people who thought that it was ok for a European based workspace who is part of our conference to market themselves like this.
Of course, I’ve picked this one on purpose. It’s not like their whole Instagram is full of culturally inappropriate photos and quotes, it must occur to someone in the company how this makes other people feel?
Or is it just me?

How Finding Your Voice Is My Why

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I was standing by the bar in Soho theatre after our 2010 Social Media Week #techForGood event.

‘You need to find your WHY Bernie’, Julie says.

 

Julie tells me about a new TED talk with over 200k views by Simon Sinek.

 

Simon says we should start with ‘our WHY’.

 

I ponder and reply, “Maybe my WHY is ‘find your voice and help others find theirs, like in Covey’s 8th Habit.”

 

“Is an outcome or a WHY?” asks Julie.

 

I stare into my drink, is it a WHY or an outcome?

 

If my voice came up and punched me in the face, I would not recognise it, let alone know if it was my WHY.

 

Over nine years later, a lot of trial, error testing and even a few triumphs here I am watching it all ‘suddenly come together.

 

The slow evolution of the podcast that is now the Coalescent Network has become the tool to connect all the threads of voice finding.

 

As a ‘freelancer committed to making a ruckus’, I’ve run workshops, events, coworking communities, blogs and podcasts.

 

They are disguised as ‘businesses’, they are a quest to stop people from living in fear and say their thing without being suckered by unscrupulous people who make human things like communication over complicated and inaccessible dark art. 

 

Each week I’m invigorated with this feeling at our Bloggers Meet Up and #Writeclub in London.

 

People gather in our coworking space, write for two hours and talk about their work.

 

I love to watching industry communities unfold. I have seen coworking, sharing economy, social media, personal branding and content marketing rise and fall.

 

These projects connected me with a large cross-section of employees, freelancers and innocent bystanders across Europe.

 

I’ve been armed with a phone, blog, mic and camera to document the process.

 

As apps advanced, I outran dyslexia that made itself painfully known during my degree in Literature and Education.

 

Audiobooks and apps saved my degree by giving me the ability to piece together my own words that had been stuck in my head.

 

When Twitter reached me in 2008, it brought me blogs, podcasts, and on-line learning.

 

By focusing just on Authority by Copyblogger and the Fizzle community, I got even more out of the learning experience.

 

Had I found my voice?

 

No, I’d just learnt HOW to find my voice, and helping other people find theirs is where the kick for me is.

 

How I Failed At My Last 12 Week Goals

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It is the last day of this round of 12 Week Year, and it has not gone at all to plan.
The goals for this round were run 5 miles in 35 minutes, do 25 Pomodoro’s a week, and post to my website.
I worked it all out and could not fail and then I did.

I learnt a lot this time around, probably the most ever. I wanted to do all these things; I did not feel lazy or not on the right track.

This year was going great.
At the end of last year, I’m stuck about where to position myself commercially, the leap from where I was to a consultant seemed ok, but I could not pull the trigger.

Then in January this year, I was playing table football with my son and our mate Maja in Shake Shake after swimming in the Olympic Park, and I casually asked, “read any good books lately?”
Her answers were ‘Living with a SEAL’ by Jessie Itzler and ‘Can’t Hurt Me’ by David Goggins, they’d been popping up in my Audible feed but they looked a bit ‘macho’ for my liking, how wrong I was, Living with a SEAL is hilarious and ridiculous at the same time.

Out of the 450+ books in my Audible account, this is the best one, just after this is 1984 by George Orwell, that is how good this is for me.

My son had started football practice with his Godfather on Saturdays, and I’d already decided to have a go at running around the football pitches while they played.

On Friday night, I started to listen to ‘Living with a SEAL’ and woke up pumped. Then from then on, I ran every day. I listen to the book a couple of times and then felt ready to dive into the more significant ‘Can’t Hurt Me’ by Goggins.

My determination went up a few more gears, and the flab around my stomach was gone overnight.

The big take away from the Goggins book is his idea that we operate at 40% of our capability and are scared to push ourselves any further, so we end up settling for mediocrity.

I’ve read a lot of stuff in a similar thread, from Stephen Covey’s work to some super cheesy self-development books that I’m not going to tell you the name of here.

When Goggins and Adam, his co-author explain it I’m sold and making changes right away; my whimpering little white entitled arse is up and out the door.

On Friday night the Godfather calls me and says we have two spaces in the London Half Marathon and it is next week, I say ‘Roger that’.

The next day I run 11 miles to see if I can, I can. It’s on.

A week later on the 10th March, I’m running around Greenwich completing a half marathon in about two hours, I’m joyful and triumphant.

The last thing on my ‘let’s beat depression forever list’ was regular exercise, and now I’m addicted, inspired and energised by running.

Then on the 11th March, my sister calls me at about 10:30 am, I can hear here car speeding along the motorway as she talks and tells me that we need to get to the hospital, our Dad is dying.

We arrive at the hospital, and he’s lying dead in his bed, I feel his chest and his smashed rib cage after they tried to resuscitate him.

There is a significant dip in his chest, and I lay my hand on it to try and feel what had happened to him, I have never been so glad to miss something in my life.

I’m crying with my sister and keep imagining what had been happening in this area of the hospital half an hour ago, there are other people here, and they must have seen and heard.

No one says anything directly, but they all act gracefully and give gentle smiles of solidarity.

I wake up the next day and plug directly into my headspace app and head for the ‘grieving pack’ and listen, after buying the Goggins book I know in an instant this is the best thing I’ve done for my mind and body this year.

I’ve been using the Headspace since 2013 as I started to battle my way back to sanity, these days I can’t imagine not sitting still for a dedicated time every day.

Our kitchen where I am every morning before everyone wakes up and I write, meditate and read, getting up early and doing these things has got me my life back.

So when my Dad died, I’d built up the most fantastic resilience I’d never had. It meant I was able to acknowledge and embrace the pain, sorry and hurt of losing someone I loved so profoundly like no one else and still function.

There was no urge to smash things up, get drunk and be angry with the world, and I was delighted to be able to cry with my wife and son and be normal and healthy.

So today I’m ok with not getting my goals done.
At one point in the last 12 Weeks, I was on the Content Lab Sprint call run by my mate Cat Johnson.

We are sharing our sprint updates, and my block is that I can’t hit publish, it is like the evil superhero force of Kilgrave in Marvel’s Jessica Jones.

Iris gentle asks me to consider that I might be working out how to move on in my grief.
It had not even occurred to me.

As Iris calmly talks, I have a massive lump in my throat and tears in my eyes; I’m sitting in my kitchen and feel a wave of relief rise through my body.

Iris recommends this TED talk, and it gels well with what I’m following in Headspace when I meditate.

A week later, everything got super intense. Both the projects I’m working on seemed to go from ‘here we are’ to ‘code urgent’.

My preferred operating method is time boxing, strategic and planned, I lust for long periods of in-depth work on blogs, podcasts, email newsletters. And reading, researching to solve problems, look for connections and surface ideas for projects.

Of course, I can do urgent, but I don’t like to, I find it very hard to switch off if I have not finished something, Jessica Abel calls this an ‘Open Loop’ and it sucks my energy and kills my creativity.
But I do get some buzz.

Now I have a new page, July is a further 12 Weeks, I have a plan forming, and I move into the new Mainyard Studios in Mile End tomorrow.

This will have my travel time from home; I’m two to three tube stops away from everyone I need to meet; for example, Liverpool Street is two stops.

I’ve got three support systems for the next run, the 90 Day Challenge in the CMA where I have to post a blog on this website by midnight every Sunday.

The CMA masterclass which is peer to peer coaching group led by Chris, this whole gig last six months.  The 12 Week WAM call which I always do with my friend Karen, every Monday at 10 am we have a call called a ‘weekly accountability meeting’ WAM.

I’ve also started a second write club on Thursdays in London, so we have Thursday and Friday from 10 am – 12 pm to sit still and get your words done.

So going forward I’ll be using that time instead of typing as fast as I can to make the midnight deadline on Sunday night.

How To Make Your First Podcast Absolutely Rock!

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Bernie, I want to start a podcast got any tips?

I get asked every week about how to start a podcast, I’m not about to start a podcast production business but here is my take.

At the end of this post is a list of websites and people I trust to teach you about podcasting, I know them, I love them and have learnt from them. 

You can also join our monthly Podcast Meet Up in London here

One thing to note is that I’ve never ever got my head around editing or that end of the tech.

I’ve worked on client projects with full editing team and dynamic everything, but my skill is in the interview and getting to air fast.

In fact, the learning curve on editing was so steep for me that I gave up and threw all my energy in learning how to interview and avoid any editing.

I watched both Frost Nixon, directed by Ron Howard and Alex Blumberg’s Power Your Podcast with Storytelling about 100 times.

Is a podcast like a blog?

There is a lot of crossover between making a podcast and making a blog, of course, one is written and one needs a whole load of audio stuff but the essence is the same.

You are creating or capturing information or an interview and sharing it with the world.

At the time of writing, it has never been easier to record something and stick it online, even ten years ago it was easier to be an astronaut that it was to make a podcast.

These days I am a heavy user of both Otter and Zoom which allows me to record every online conversation I have and turn it into text, scroll down to read more about these apps.

How can I start recording a podcast today?

So before you run off an invest 1000’s of £’s, $’s or whatever you buy you stuff in slow down and pick up your phone.

Look for an app called Auphonic, download it and create your free account.

This app will record your interview on your phone, then you can upload the audio where it will do some magic engineering on the audio to balance it out, it won’t edit it though.

From here you can send it to your Dropbox, Google Drive or publish to Spreaker and Youtube.

You have to connect these up in Auphonic but that is easy.

But we are not concerned with the other levels of sophistication in Auphonic, we are only looking to record something and post it. Read on for more details and action.

How do you plan your first podcast?

Lock yourself in a room and interview ANYONE or even just read something back to yourself to get used to talking and recording.

Write out the order of what you are going to ask questions, talk about or anything like that.

This is one place where a blog post and podcast look the same, you are mapping out the order. Which is simply the beginning, middle and end.

You can do this on one bit of paper and you only need a few prompts.

It is worth noting that I always do this and hardly ever look at it, proof that just the act of writing it helps you organise your head.

So you have had a practice run, you have felt stupid, embarrassed and the other odd feeling you get when you to talk yourself, alone with a phone.

At this point, you’ll be looking at all the podcasting greats in Apple and Spotify, you’ll be thinking of NPR, BBC and Netflix wondering how you are going to make the leap from where you are with your phone to world domination.

Stop it, this is sophisticated procrastination and you have not even hit publish yet.

A well-known reality check for imposter syndrome and people like me who like polishing things too much rather than hitting publish is this segment called ‘The Gap, by Ira Glass’

 

Recording online

In this post here by Colin Gray AKA, The Podcast Host talks about options for recording online.

Not every platform will enable you to record on a phone or a tablet, for example, Zencastr is a great option but only works in the chrome or firefox browser on a computer.

Out of every app I’ve used since I started podcasting in 2011 Zoom is my preferred one, it is like a way better version of Skype.

It records both ends of the call and then mixes it together, the recordings are stored online in your account. Zoom also works directly with Calendly for online bookings and syncs directly with G-Suite apps like Gmail and Google Calendar.

Otter is a transcription also connects directly to Zoom. I can record a call and it is sent by magic to Otter and the words are there in less than five minutes. I’m working on perfecting the art of recording an interview that will go straight to text, so the skill is in how I ask the questions and get answers. I’ll keep you posted, it’s not going quite as well as I thought!

 

Where to publish your podcast.

I would use Auphonic to send your audio to Youtube and this might be all you need, it is free and you can ‘flex your podcast muscles’ you can also embed the Youtube on your blog or website.

I’d call this the MVP, the whole shock of recording something and putting it online can be absorbed by pushing a button in Auphonic and then sending it to Youtube.

If you have a Squarespace website you can just add audio in there, I’m a WordPress fanboy, but in this regard, Squarespace has made it super easy.   

Castos is what we use on Coalescent Podcast Network, it is a plugin and also you get a basic website, so you can start publishing before you commit to a bigger website project.

I obediently used Lipsync at first but my face fell off it was so complicated. I get shit from ‘real podcasters’ for not using Lipsync but I’m happy with Castos.

Of course, I’ve used Soundcloud and Spreaker in the past, I chose Castos because of the long-standing reputation Craig and his crew have in the blogging/podcasting world and because of Castos working specifically well with the WP Genesis framework that underpins Studio Press.

What podcast microphone do I need?

For an absolute beginner, an Apple headset and computer or phone will be fine. Yes, you heard me, that is it. 

You need to make sure you are in a quiet space, without echo or interruptions. If you are recording online with something like Zoom make sure you have a good internet connection.

Trying to record a podcast in a cafe on public wifi on your phone with headphones it not a good idea.

For the first few recordings are where you’ll develop your style, then you can work out how you think you will work.

Don’t be the knob that buys all the gear and then does not use it.

I did not know anything about gear, other people who knew what they were doing got it for me.

Back in 2014, I did a series of company podcast projects run by Jon Buscall and his agency in Stockholm. Jon sent me all my gear and I’ve taken care of it and used it ever since, so I managed to miss out the endless comparing of mics and recorders.

 

Some of those people have written posts here about

 

One of the best podcasts about podcasting on the face of the earth is Podcraft with Colin and xxxx

It is rock solid, down to earth advice and you won’t be played loud adverts about joining a 10K mastermind group to make your first million.

 

Also, Craig has regular good content on the Castos blog

 

Christina and Aaron from Australia Podcast do videos every Tuesday on Linkedin here.

 

Back in 2018 both Craig, Aaron and Christina we all in London at the same time and we did an impromptu workshop at our coworking space for London Bloggers Meet Up.

 

Most of the episodes are organised into seasons so they are easy to dip in and out of.

 

From July we’ll run the London Podcasting Community Meet Up from Mainyard and you are welcome to join us in person whether you are a hardcore pro or just starting out.

 

How To Really Know What To Do As A Freelancer

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These places are how I get my work done.

Somewhere back in 2016, I made a firm choice to commit to only a few places, and this is how I really worked out what to do as a freelancer. 

I’d spend so much time looking at different blogs, videos and looking for the silver bullet.

I went through a two-year space, trying to be the worlds best web copywriter, it was torture.

My heart was set on it, and I could see how it would work, but it drained me.

Every job was like finishing an essay for the class in University you only took because you had to.

I’m glad I did it as I learnt more about writing, organising, apps and execution than anything else in my world.

 

There are three main points I want to make with this article, and they are:

  1. Embracing constant learning is right for your heart, soul and bank balance.
  2. Peer to peer learning, working and accountability are amazing. They give a sharp kick in the groin to the fantasy and delusion that working on your own tends to bring on.
  3. Everything takes longer than you think and is twice as hard, but that does not mean you should not do it. I often hear people say, ‘I read this book, and then everything worked’; or ‘I did this course and then brought a private jet’. It does not happen like that, and people who tell you that are lying bastards.

Goals And Fantasy

In all these groups below, I’ve seen people thrive and dive, get in the flow and get knocked back down. I have got stopped in my tracks more than once and had to figure out what to do next.

Being part of these groups continues to build my inner self-confidence.

They’ve also stamped on my fantasy business life and enabled me to be more helpful to people.

For example, at the beginning of this year, I was on a call with my mate Catherine.

We are going through our goals for the year, this is the first year I’ve done all that geeky write them out and plan them shit.

So I read in a blaze of glory and then Catherine ask ‘that’s great Bernie, how are you going to do that?

Even after all the work, all those 12 Week year cycles and the reading I did not have an answer.

I could not say the steps I had to take every day to make my goals happen.

 

So here is how it all goes down every week. And, of course, the weeks I stick to it are way more successful than the weeks I look for new shiny things to save my life.

 

1. The 12 Week Year ‘WAM’ Weekly Accountability Meeting

For a few years now, I’ve followed a method outlined in the book 12 Week Year.

The short version is you commit to a few things for 12 weeks and drop the idea of ‘annualised thinking’.

I follow this with a friend Karen I met via our MeetUp group, every Monday at 10 am we have a call and review our week. Some weeks I turn up like Superman and some weeks it is a total shit storm.

Both are great, and it is never as bad as it seems.

Tracking every week shines a light on where I am lying to myself. I’m honest about what my hidden intention is vs my actual intention is.

For example, at the end of 2018, I made the goal of joining a gym.

What happened?

I only walked into a gym, I was stuck.

I liked the idea of being fit, but it was not the gym, and then in January, I started running every day.

This time around, I am struggling with writing.

I have battled with this every week, now as you see that is starting to work again!

 

2. Cat Johnsons Coworking Content Sprint

I’ve followed Cat’s work since 2012 when she started talking about coworking and tiny houses on ‘Shareable.net’.

The way she builds this group is a testament to her understanding of the power of collaboration.

This is a sprint group, we all show up, talk about our goals around what we are working on and ask for feedback.

It’s an online coworking space for coworking people talking about coworking content.

Very meta.

You think you are turning up for marketing advice, but then the real stuff comes up and the magic happens.  

You could google this shit all day on your own, but here you ask one question and get 10 peer answers back, I love it.

Join a solid crew of coworking industry enthusiasts and me for the next round here.

 

3. CMA 90 Day Challenge

This is part of the CMA membership, which in itself is now the backbone of my freelancer practice.

I was loving it from the beginning when I joined in 2017, and I’ve never had so much definition in what I work on and how I do that.

The weekly coaching from Chris and the peer to peer feedback has got me from pissing in the wind to laser-focused.

The 90 Day Challenge is a regular ‘in house’ sprint, this podcast here will explain it.

Every week 41 of us commit to some form of content to have the link to in slack by midnight Sunday.

On Thursday, Chris does a live coaching call on how we are doing.

This is the eighth round, and the progression of people is impressive, a good example is the ever loveable Col Gray.

Col is does branding and has amassed 13K+ subscribers on YouTube.

Most of them over the eight rounds of the 90 Day Challenge. I’ve followed his journey I’ve seen him struggle, work it out and then zoom.

It is worth noting I’ve never actually made it all the way through a 90 Day Challenge.

I’ve flunked many times, as painful as it is the learning is priceless, I find it amazing that I forget to post’.

I’ve been waiting for this round, this article you are reading is the second week, and this time I’m doing every week.

 

4. Fizzle

I signed up for Fizzle after hearing Paul Jarvis talk about it in one of his courses and Fizzle saved my life.

There is a lot of content on Fizzle that you’ll find elsewhere, but their edge is their silly sense of humour, and the mighty Fizzle Roadmap.

All the courses get positioned in the Roadmap that you work your way through, this stops you doing everything in one go.

It’s an elegant form of distraction learning about SEO before you’ve even written a blog post.

The best one for me was picking a topic course, there is a grid you fill in with your business idea and score to each one.

My top three topics came out as:

Podcasting

Coworking

Productivity

I then had to work out how to make income around these three, which was not immediately apparent.

For a while, a group of us would meet in our coworking space and work our way through the map together.

We all got somewhere, and this is the key you have to keep trying to get through it.

I’ve started the Fizzle Roadmap more than a few times!

This time it’s about building the workshop element of my business. I love teaching people how to get stuff on their website to attract customers, and it is more than saying “I do this.”

Going through the map gives me a structure and feeds me the questions I need to keep my idea and plan on track.

This is agony for me, but every time I do it, I get a little better.

There is a thriving online community, but I don’t spend any time there.

I’m more connected to other groups, but I know plenty of people who have done well from the Fizzle online connection.

 

Both Fizzle and 90 Day Challenge have punched me in the face hard. I keep getting up like Rocky, well not like Rocky, I’m a short bald man from Ilford – but you get the idea.

 

5. Write Club – Meetup Group

So in 2015, a group of us in Mainyard Studios were moaning about our freelance life and never having time to write.

We were in some kind of creative job, filmmaker, web developer, PR and me, I was not sure as I had not done the Fizzle Roadmap!

So we agreed to meet once a week in the meeting room and sit for two hours in total silence and write.

At first, we were like kids in the back of a car on a long journey, we could not sit still.

Then we got our shit on and started to produce, and embraced the focus.

A year later, we put the group on MeetUp, which I initially did not want to do, it exploded, and we’ve never looked back.

The range of people and what they work on is impressive, from journalists, musicians, short story writers and marketers.

As Ann Handley says, Everybody Writes, and as we all know, everyone has their story.

I’ve noticed that this is one of the things I tell people about the most, and it is such a part of my week. I almost take it for granted.

You are welcome to join us at Bathtub2Boardroom every Friday morning.

We’ll be opening another day in the new Mainyard Studios by Mile End station in July 2019

Join the Meet Up here.

6. Make Your Mark Online – WordPress Coaching

The biggest £uk-ING whine I hear is ‘I can’t sort my website out’, and I’ve had this whine myself for years.

The learning curve for figuring it out is always too much, I have never, ever got my head around which bit to do first.

Even when I’ve had a friend who is a WordPress guru I’ve felt crap asking them for help on every step, even if they offered.

Or there was the agony of which online WordPress course to take.  

A lot of the basic stuff gets covered in Fizzle, but I know I need to make my site sing.

Also, when I don’t know what is going on with my website, I seize up, and that seize can last for months!

So the end of 2018 I bit the bullet, and I paid my coworking buddy to set me up on WP Engine from scratch for a fresh start.

This was when I joined “Make Your Mark” run by Martin and Lyndsay who are Jammy Digital.

This is an active online community of freelancers, consultants and other independent economic agents’ learning how to build and run their own WordPress website.

There are rock solid video courses on content and SEO, backed up by a weekly group call where you can ask anything, well anything about your website.

 

7. Freelance Heroes

My mate Ed Goodman started this facebook group in May 2016. We all blinked, and over 6k UK based freelancers had joined.

I hate facebook, but I stay for this group.

Why? It is excellent to know I’m not mad, that it’s ok to have a crap day and I love giving recommendations for accounting apps.

I hate facebook, but I stay for this group.

Best of all I get to meet the real-life UK based freelancers how don’t shout out ‘hustle’ all the time or Instagram themselves sports cars.

These are my people.