Pop-up newsletter on creativity - failed

Hey Cultivating Creativity newsletter readers.

I failed.

As you may have seen the newsletter stopped around Day 6. And thank you to those who reached out to make sure I was ok :) I am.

But I failed with this creative project, I will explain below for those who are interested.

And instead of it being a pop-up newsletter, I have actually stuck all 31 ideas (now 30 for brevity) into an eBook which is free to download here. (CM 14 in the store - and free!)

As with all creative endeavours - there could be failure. From the failure though, are opportunities to learn (I cover this in the creativity guide). And I did indeed learn from this creative pursuit. I took the learnings, pivoted and created a new guide. It's actually the size of a small book.

Why did it fail?

1. LinkedIn.
2. My choice of platform was a monumentally bad decision. Every day I receive several invites to newsletters I have no interest in. They sounded pretty dull sometimes - and the commitment to them sounded long term. I wanted a short, pop-up newsletter about a fun topic like creativity - and then it was gone. Only the LinkedIn platform didn't play ball.
3. I lost several posts that disappeared from draft. Images wouldn't upload. The formatting was sketchy and I would lose formatted text.
4. Ultimately though, on Day 6 I simply could not post. It wouldn't let me. In fact, if you're reading this it's a sign the problem has gone away. Nothing but errors all day when I tried to post. Not even helpful messages that explained what was wrong. Try again later is not helpful after several hours of trying again later.
5. Readers complained they couldn't turn the notifications off even though they'd got the settings right. Some readers couldn't turn them on. Some readers simply didn't get them.
6. As such, the platform proved a bad choice.
7. At this point I had a a few choices.
8. 1 - Stop the newsletter and never share this goodness. Not a good choice.
9. 2 - Pivot to my own Mailchimp newsletter platform. Not a good choice as it would be a new audience and I couldn't face the social media effort of gathering new readers for something that would be gone in 31 days.
10. 3 - Pivot and turn the content into an eBook and offer it for free. Done. And it's here.

Creativity is always a risk. The idea you are trying to bring to life may not work. The process may fail. The idea itself may be of no value. The journey to bring it to life may halt you (believe me, having ideas is the easy part).

It is risky to be creative because failure is never far away. And this is why companies often struggle with innovation and creativity. Leaders and managers want innovation but they also create a fear of failure. I cover this in my eBook.

So, I failed. But I also learned. I then pivoted. And ultimately brought my ideas to life.

Sorry for the radio silence around this. We also had Covid in the house, work got overwhelming quite quickly and January is a moody month for me (reaches for the SAD Lamp).

I hope the eBook hits the spot. It's CM 14 in the Cultivated Management Store and is entirely free. It's a PDF by the way.

Thanks for being good subscribers.

And of course, there's a reality you may not even get this message :)

Thanks

Rob