Yesterday in my Daily Email House community, I announced the winner of the prestigious “Inaugural Pool Party Funniest Comment” award.
The lucky winner was audio-engineer-turned-newsletter-operator Filip Stilin. Filip’s winning comment was:
“Subject line: He auctioned his CAT?!?!”
(In case you’re wondering why Filip’s comment was possibly funny, I could explain it, but would that make it funny now? I suspect no. Such is the nature of humor. You had to be there.)
Filip’s prize for writing this funniest comment are A) a physical copy of my favorite comedy book, which has influenced my writing as much as any copywriting or marketing book I’ve ever read, and B) the pleasure of seeing his comment turned into an actual subject line in my email today.
Now here’s the point, and why you might feel this email is anything beyond an inside joke run amok:
The whole idea for this “funniest comment” contest came up as a suggestion during the auction I ran last week, by one of the auction participants.
It was a suggestion I immediately adopted.
That’s because the biggest thing I’ve learned over the past year of running a community is to stop trying to do everything myself… to start asking for feedback and guidance and input… to let people participate and shape the direction of the group… instead of hitting them over the head repeatedly with content and “value” and then wondering why nobody’s engaging.
It’s kinda opposite of how I run this newsletter, which is guided exclusively and jealously by my own standards and tastes and preferences.
That’s not to say I can never adopt others’ suggestions in these emails. In fact that’s what I’m doing today with Filip’s subject line.
But that’s all done in line with the core concept of this newsletter, which I’ve realized is about performing real magic, about turning ideas into reality, about casting spells that make living, breathing rabbits appear.
That might sound grandiose, and maybe it is. In any case it’s true.
For example, the spell for today was “Apply a suggestion coming from the audience.”
Tomorrow’s spell might be something else.
This spell-based approach has been profoundly valuable to me in running this newsletter, and has made this newsletter 1000x more fun and educational and ultimately profitable than it would have been otherwise.
If you you wanna find out more about this “real magic” way of running a newsletter, and of the power of turning ideas into reality, I have created a course all abut it. It describes my approach in detail, gives lots of examples, and maybe encourages you to apply the same in your own world. For more info: