"The Countdown Begins"
On pyramid schemes, Ratatouille and endings that are sort of like beginnings.
The subject line from my editor's most recent email was "The Countdown Begins." I sent her the last updates to Squarespace from Signup to Launch. She, in turn, sent the final version to their distributor to prepare for publication day, on July 31st. Now that I’ve wrapped that up, I’ll spend this week preparing to upload my course, Better than Launched: Advanced Squarespace Tools to the team at SuperHi so they can get it ready to go live on August 14th. Huzzah!
(Have you watched The Great? You should, unless you’re my parents, in which case, no I haven’t seen it either.)
They’ve grown into perfect halves of each other- the book is a great guide for anyone taking the course and the course is a perfect next step if you’ve read and used the book to build a basic website. I’m told that this is called a ladder- eventually, folks who read my book, take the course, then maybe hire Week of the Website….and so on.
Writing a book and creating the course has felt like an extension of my passion for approachable web design. To borrow from Ratatouille (aka Cook Cook Mouse in our house), anyone can build a website. But now that I’m *thisclose* to launching both, it’s time to figure out how to share them with the world.
Enter the Chef Skinner1 of it all — There’s such a huge movement toward online education right now, which is amazing and terrible (like The Great). A few months ago, when it occurred to me that I would have to market both book and course for them to be found and used, I tried to understand content marketing by way of immersion and signed up for various free guides or webinars. My inbox has since become a dumpster fire* of “Six Figure [insert offering here]” and “Two Comma [skill]”.
For the uninitiated, what happens next is that various online practitioners teach you how to make money using a skill so that you can eventually build your own content marketing funnel, and charge other people in your field to teach them to make money, so they can eventually build a course to take money from other people to…. and up and up we go. The base widens, the top narrows, and what once was a simple lead gen tool is a situation that looks more and more like a less structured version of LuLaRoe...an absolute pyramid scheme.
I hate it. So much. I hate it like I hated the “Whats up girlie!?” facebook messages of the 2010’s that preceded a pitch for cosmetics of questionable provenance. I hate how hollow it is, and how predatory. I hate how it makes people feel tricked and trapped, instead of empowered and confident. Have the bored apes taught us nothing?
It’s easy to feel like this scammy approach is the only model of marketing content, and I’m sorry if you now see it everywhere, but that predatory approach is not for me. I’ve in my head about all of this, but centering on the students has helped so much. If they can’t find it, they can’t try something new. I have to share what I’ve made to help people learn. I am not trying to build a corn puppy empire2- we’re just aiming for a little perspective. For the folks that pick up the book or sign up for the course, I’m hoping to be the rat under their hat, just until they feel confident enough to be a great chef all on their own.
”You’re referencing a lot of things here. I love this, but if you haven’t seen Ratatouille, you’ll have no f****** clue”‘s review of this newsletter
(Tried to show my parents this one, but they really did not like it. Fell asleep AND left offended. Five stars!)
Perspective helps bring me back to the reason why I worked on both of these projects in the first place: I am thrilled to share what I’ve learned over the last dozen years in the world of Squarespace, and I’m keeping that at the heart of everything that comes next. The making of the book and course has ended. I’m just at the beginning of sharing it with the world.
To that end, we are now entering the lightly promotional portion of this letter — I will not force you to exit through the gift shop, but if you’d like a postcard….
I’ll be joining Christy Price for an Ask Us Anything on July 25th. Christy is an amazing Squarespace educator and one of the experts I interviewed for my book, and we always have a good time. I’ve turned to Christy more than once for advice on how to be a working mom and I can’t wait till I visit her in Austin someday.
I’ll also be in New York City at the end of August to join Christy, Will Myers and Justin Mabee at Squarespace Circle Day. Our panel is about building paid membership areas on Squarespace. Unfortunately, our panel is in-person only, but you can register to attend virtually here.
I joined SuperHi Plus cohort member Zach Grosser on his podcast Bézier to talk about our time in the global incubator that is/was SuperHi+, my “AI is a Microwave” metaphor and how we run a joyful web design agency.
My book is available for pre-order wherever books are books**
Finally, SuperHi is running 30% off sale today. My course is a part of their SuperHi unlimited subscription and will be available on August 14th.
Thanks for reading, see you on the Internet!
Kelsey
*Regrets, and unsubscribes, I have a few.
** It’s not on bookshop.org yet, but I will link that once it is!
Chef Skinner is the baddie in Ratatouille - he’s a scammer and leverages Chef Auguste Gusteau’s esteemed culinary legacy to make money selling terrible frozen meals
This is an example of one of his bad frozen food ideas