My Experience Writing Online for 100 Days [Ship 30 for 30 Review]

About a year ago, I noticed that my Twitter feed was being flooded by these short, interesting essays that were coming across from a hashtag and a community of writers calling themselves Ship 30 for 30. Now, my interest was piqued on this because, as original subscribers, early bird subscribers of this channel will know, I launched my YouTube channel with a 30-day challenge back in February of 2017. And so when I saw a community of people that were committed to to shipping a piece of writing every single day for 30 days, I had to know more. What I discovered and joined personally was the Ship 30 for 30 community led by Dickie Bush and Nicholas Cole. And what I'm going to share with you in this video are the 4 reasons you need to establish a writing habit and how Ship 30 for 30 might just be the greatest community ever assembled for doing exactly that. My name is Matt Ragland, and I help creators be more productive and profitable with simple systems and personal lessons learned from 10 years on the front lines of the creator economy and working at some of the most exciting companies in software for creators, including ConvertKit and Podia. As the month went on, I was astounded to see how consistent this really large group of people was at consistently putting their ideas online. Like I said, I started my channel with a 30-day YouTube challenge back in February 2017, but one of the things that Ship 30 has and is to and to me the most important part of the process is a community of people who are with you along for the ride. This is really important because one of the biggest problems that new creators face is not necessarily coming up with ideas and not necessarily even sharing their ideas, even though both of those are problems to be solved. But the biggest problem that most people face when it comes to creating and shipping content online is a community of people to engage with your work. Even the most dedicated creators find it difficult to launch something into the world and not really get much feedback for it. Because, yes, you should be creating things because you feel compelled to make those things, but also because I think for almost every creator that I have talked to, I know for me in particular, you want to see that your work, that your ideas are helping people. And so when you feel like you're just shouting into the internet void, it can feel pretty disheartening when it comes to like creating and publishing content online. That's the biggest thing that Ship 30 helps with, along with a few other aspects that make it really helpful for new creators or just people looking to establish an online writing habit. That was exactly the struggle that my brother Mark had when he started creating content online a couple of years ago. He started a newsletter, he wrote on a blog, and it was good writing, but the ability to find other people to engage with and that disheartened feeling of, I'm publishing something, I can't really get that much engagement with it, so I don't feel as motivated because I don't feel like it's helping anybody because no one's engaging with it, that kind of negative spiral. You can also use those same aspects in creating a community, which Ship 30 has done, to gather together people that are going to engage with your writing, that are going to support you, that are going to help hold you accountable. All of these are really important aspects of creating and publishing content online. Since joining Ship 30 for 30 in early 2021, Mark has written nearly 100 atomic essays ranging on topics from outdoor adventure to modern masculinity and how he also likes to use notebooks and other types of productivity principles to stay on task and focused in his remote sales job. From my experience as a creator and also coaching many creators through ConvertKit and Podia over the years, there are 3 main problems that most new people face when it comes to building a writing habit and especially publishing that content online. This also goes for YouTube videos and podcasts. The number 1 reason that people struggle is that they have trouble generating ideas, and maybe if they don't have trouble with that, then they have trouble with the second thing, which is the ability to put their ideas into healthy creative constraints so that they are able to actually get over perfectionism and ship the daggum thing. And if you're able to get over both of those, which many people are— like, I celebrate all the people who are able to publish their creative work online— the third and most, like, detrimental, disheartening problem that people face with creating publishing content online is having a community of people around to engage with it. Like, that's one of the reasons that you kind of want to build an audience, so that you are able to see that your work is helping others and that there's some engagement so you can continue to learn what works and like what kind of falls flat. Well, Ship 30 for 30 helps you solve all 3 of those problems, and the biggest one being that there are literally hundreds of people that sign up for Ship 30 every single cohort. There are accountability groups, there are people that you like get to work with and celebrate each other's progress and give each other feedback on your writing and also to help promote it when it actually goes out. Because like I said, the most kind of disheartening, depressing feeling of being a creator is the feeling of shouting into the void of the internet. They're like, I made this thing! And it's like even worse, even worse than hearing like, we don't care, is like hearing nothing. And so many people, so many people face that. And one of the things, probably the thing that Ship 30 does best, is give you a community of people who are ready to cheer you on and support you while you are on this journey together. Now, before we jump into the 4 reasons to build a writing habit, I want to let you know that if this just first few minutes has resonated with you and you're like, heck yes, this is exactly what I need, I've been wanting to start writing, I want a community, I want someone to help hold me accountable and celebrate the things that I'm doing, give me feedback on my writing, give me a structure. All of those things Ship 30 for 30 will give you, and all you have to do is go to mattreiland.com/ship30 and you'll find everything you need to know about joining the next cohort of the program. Now they're launching new programs like every 6 weeks, very consistent, very regular. So all you have to do is go there and you'll find all that you need to know about joining the next cohort. There are 4 reasons to build a writing habit. Number 1 is to organize your ideas. Number 2 is to share your ideas. Number 3, establish expertise. And number 4, explore new topics that you're interested in. I'm going to give you 4 short stories and examples about how you can implement each of these examples into your own work and life. The number 1 reason to build a writing habit is to organize your own ideas and thoughts. We all have them every single day, but not many people thoughtfully take the time to curate and expand on their own ideas and thoughts that really matter to them. Now, you may ask yourself, like, how do I know it really matters to me? And one of the reasons that you'll do that is by thoughtfully kind of thinking through these primary ideas, things that just interest you. And that's a really good place to start. As you're going through the day and you think or realize, like, wow, that, that's really interesting to me, just simply following that thought, like, why is that interesting to me? Writing down a few sentences about why something is interesting to you and other ideas that that helps you connect with is a really key concept and skill that will help you become a better writer and thinker. If you remember the work of Niklas Luhmann with the Zettelkasten, then you'll realize that organizing your personal thoughts and ideas and concepts are ways to expand on ideas that you have and summarize the ideas of others. Ship 30 for 30 is a great application of that because the concise, like, The constrained nature of these notes, 250 words, is a perfect kind of note card style writing that allows you to focus on one idea at a time. And as you start to organize these ideas, but you start to build like these literal like chunks of content and ideas that then you can reassemble and stick back together if you're starting a new project, if you have a new piece of content that you're working on, it essentially allows you to never start from scratch with new ideas and projects ever again. The second reason to build a writing habit is that you get to share your ideas. So I told you about my brother Mark's experience with sharing his ideas and creating a bit of a following and growing his Twitter presence through Ship 30 for 30. But I also want to tell you about Andrew Malloy, who is a client and student and a member of the community. Great guy. And for a really long time, he had trouble like sharing those ideas. Well, Andrew has interest in automation, and he's a software engineer, and just a, you know, really brilliant, thoughtful guy. But going from organizing ideas to then sharing them had always been kind of a struggle for him. And so joining Ship 30 for 30, he found the proper creative constraints in that 250-word atomic essay, kind of like playground sandbox for creativity that he you get to have. And he has now written, I think as of, as of today, like 112 atomic essays. And so it's really cool to see Andrew be able to organize his ideas and now be able to share over 100 atomic essays that are thoughtful, that are curated, and are really well delivered, that help get to reason number 3 to build a writing habit. And that is to establish expertise. When you have organized your ideas, when you have shared them online over and over and over again, hundreds of days, then you start to establish an expertise because you have the courage to share and thoughtfully organize the types of, like, concepts and ideas that you have. People will naturally start to see you as an expert in your field and as someone who is willing and able to share their ideas consistently. We've talked about this. If you're a viewer of the channel, and especially someone who has read my articles and newsletters on the 10, 100, and 1,000 rep, or the 1,000-round rule, then you'll know that it is through consistent creation and publication that you become an expert in the field. Because as you publish, you also learn, you develop ideas, And my, my, my favorite example of this is the YouTuber MKBHD. When Marques, Marques Brownlee, uh, MKBHD created his 100th video, he had 76 subscribers. Well, now Marques is over 1,400 published videos. He also has 14 million subscribers on YouTube, and he is probably the most well-known and most well-respected tech YouTuber in the space. So it is through that consistent long-term publication of your ideas and curating the different thoughts and concepts you have and connecting the dots for people. But it's only through organizing your ideas and sharing them that you move into, like, especially online, this ability to establish expertise in your given field and topic of study. The fourth reason to build a writing habit, even though there are many, many, many more, But the fourth reason that I have for building a writing habit that Ship 30 for 30 can help you with is you get to explore new topics that are interesting to you. So often when you're publishing content, like on a, on a longer timeframe, whether it's every week or every month, you feel like you, and I feel certainly feel this way sometimes, you feel like you have to stay in your lane in terms of what people expect from you. But when you're publishing like one idea every day, either on email or short videos or on Twitter in the Ship 30 for 30 framework, you get the opportunity to just try a couple of new things. And my favorite example of this recently is my friend Catherine Lavery, who is the founder of BestSelf. Many of you will know and have used the Self Journal. It's one of my favorite structured planners. You can check it out, other videos that I have about the Self Journal. But Catherine is also really brilliant when it comes to crypto and decentralized finance, DeFi. And Ship 30 was one of the places that she started writing consistently about crypto and DeFi. Now in Ship 30 for 30, she also wrote about things that people more expected her to write about, like business and what it's like running a team and growing a startup and all the different things that go along with running a successful business. But then she was also, because she's publishing every day, wrote some about crypto, wrote some about DeFi. And was able to kind of parlay the engagement and interest that people had in those posts to really start to do more to put together a course and do more writing and more like long-form posts and other like YouTube videos that she started to put together on crypto and DeFi. And this is also kind of a playbook that I followed as well. So when I wrote my Ship 30 for 30 Atomic Essays, I wrote a lot about the creator economy. I wrote a lot about courses, about how creators get stuff done. So I did start to overlap like creativity and productivity, but it was in a kind of low, low-risk, you know, consistent daily environment like Ship 30 that allowed me to push out like one idea a day and just see like, how do people engage with that? Did people find that interesting? And so it really allows you to explore new topics that you're interested in but aren't really maybe quite sure how people will respond to them. And it's okay even if people don't like them or you don't get as much engagement. If it's still something that you're interested in, maybe just try it in a different way. But it feels really cool, it feels really exciting when you write about something that you're like, ooh, I wonder if people are going to like this, and you put it on Twitter. Because Twitter is like the greatest idea lab, the greatest like feedback loop for interesting information that's ever been created in mankind, I think. And when people give you instant, like, positive feedback on that, you're like, ooh, that's interesting. I'm going to talk about this a different way. I'm going to expand on this topic. The other reason that you can do this, and this is kind of a, like, big picture, like, maybe this is the fifth reason, but as you write, you start to get more ideas about writing. As you record videos, you get more ideas about recording videos. Partly is because, like, that momentum— we talked about this in the email newsletter recently— But that momentum really like builds. So you feel more excited about creating things. The other reason when you produce content consistently and people engage with it, going back to that community aspect of Ship 30, then people will ask questions. They'll be like, hey, can you clarify this? Or I was a little confused about that part. This is something that I saw in a big way the first year that I was on YouTube. I created a lot of videos about a lot of different topics. But it was through doing 70 videos in that first year that I was able to see, oh, the bullet journal productivity videos did the most, did, did the best by far. So I'm going to make some more videos about that. And then as I started to make like bigger YouTube videos, people would ask like, oh, well, tell me about the 10 blocks. Why do you track time? And those became really big videos for me as well. But because I like started, I organized my ideas, I shared those ideas. Started to build some expertise around productivity. This— these are like big picture things for building an audience, for like doing work online, but you can start really small with it through Ship 30 for 30. It's my favorite like course, especially on writing and audience building that I've taken. The community engagement and support is huge. It's the templates and the structure that they give you so it feels less overwhelming. Like everything that you see about Ship 30 or Shirt 30 for 30. There are tweet frameworks, there are like walkthroughs and videos about how to like put your essay onto Twitter like as an image. It is so, so straightforward and so well taught that really all you have to do is write. Now it's still not— that's still no small thing. But like all of the other elements that come into like, hey, how do I do this online? Ship 30 for 30, Dickie and Cole, your two captains in Ship 30, help you so much with that. And if that wasn't enough, they also host weekly office hour, like Q&A calls, often with guest experts to just answer any of your questions live. So don't ever feel like you're gonna go into Ship 30 and be alone. In fact, you'll be surrounded, literally surrounded by hundreds of people who are excited about the work that you're creating and are really pumped to support you. And that is a really like— that builds a lot of momentum. As you can tell, I highly recommend joining the next cohort of Ship 30 for 30. I had a great experience. I've recommended it to several people. I think like 15 to 20 people so far from this YouTube and newsletter community have gone through Ship 30. People like Andrew, Craig, Tracy, Nori. If I'm— I know I'm leaving people out, but those are some that like jump to mind right away. If you want to have a community of people who are going to support you and cheer you on while you establish and create a writing habit online, this is the perfect way to do it. And if you want to get involved in the next cohort of Ship 30 for 30, just go to mattreiland.com/ship30 and you will be able to learn everything you need to know about joining the next cohort. If you want to learn a little bit more about Ship 30 and even get a free training from myself, Dickie, and Cole, All you have to do is go to the description in the link below, and you will get a free hour-long training and a few more emails about how Ship 30 can help you. If you want to get a head start on your Ship 30 essays, then comment below with your topic or area of interest, and I'll help you generate a few ideas that you can get started with on how to actually write something. Remember, it's just one idea. It's really simple. It's 250 words or less, so don't feel like you have to overwrite something or be like, okay, this newsletter, this blog is supposed to be 1,000 words, or This video is supposed to be 10 minutes. It's just, it's a short, clear, concise delivery of one idea. And so just share that in the comments below. I'll help you come up with a few ideas and make sure you check out Ship 30. They said go to the link in the description below and get signed up. If you have any questions, please let me know. Again, comments, topics, ideas. I'm here to help, and I think this could be a literal game changer, maybe even a life changer. For you to get involved with something like Ship 30. All right, thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.