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Let’s dream big this week!
As a kid, I always loved playing this game with my peers. It goes like this:
Me - “What would you do with a million dollars?”
Them - “I’d buy my own spaceship!”
Our ideas weren’t always great, but the spirit of wild imagination was at work, and it felt so freeing to dream about having limitless options. Maybe we would buy the coolest car we had ever seen or build a mansion with waterslides. We might travel to distant locations or star in our own movies. There were no boundaries to fear, no restrictions on how to spend the money, and nobody asking for receipts.
These days we see a lot of recommendations to grow our publications and get more subscribers. That’s how SmallStack started, after all—this community wanted a place to gather where being small was cool and growth could happen the way we wanted it, not the way everyone else went about it.
So today I invite you to dream big! Instead of money…
What if you had a million subscribers?
What would you create?
Who would you lift up?
What would you accomplish with your bigger voice?
Would you change what your publication does?
In your response feel free to…
Give us a link to a post (yours or someone else’s) about dreaming and growth that feels relevant.
Tell us what growth has looked like for your publication.
This SmallTalk discussion will be open through Friday, October 11.
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This reminds me of something that my boss keeps asking lately: what would you do if you won the lottery? He says that the smart thing to do is to buy some houses and to invest the remainder so that you can keep on growing your wealth (a real capitalist approach, but that's why he can run a successful business I guess, haha).
In this version, it may be the same: the smartest thing to do would be to reinvest your subscribers so that they can care about things more than just your own publication. Share other publications, more works, and more causes, related or not to your original intentions.
But if we're talking dreams, this isn't mine. I admire you who would dream to do this smart thing, but I don't think I'd be able to handle it.
I have the same idea for what I'd do if I won the lottery and what I'd do if I had a million subscribers (assuming that a portion would be paid subs anyway): I'd pay off my parents' house and figure out a way to run a shelter/skill-building workshop for crafts, engineering, and music. Or, maybe it'll have a plant nursery and offer classes on natural wonders and ecosystems. Maybe both. Some kind of place where anyone can enter and stay so long as they participate in maintaining these simple, fulfilling works, and learn a little something. Community projects could take place there. People would learn to take care of each other and know each other. There would be showers, some very nice bathrooms, and a decent area for sleeping. Maybe we could have a food pantry that people could contribute to. Well, it'd just be a very nice place to be among others and do our crafts. Or hang out with plants. It would need a lot of willing participants to keep it running, so I would use my platform to find volunteers or else fund the whole shebang with them, if that's even possible. Well, since it's a dream, I'll pretend it's possible.
I don't know if I'd talk about it on my publication. Oh, if I were to recruit volunteers for the place, I guess I'd have no choice, but writing stories is all I want to do(I feel bad, but I also think that besides the money and opportunity part, I wouldn't really care if I had a million subscribers). Maybe, I'll run a new section specifically for the shelter to give updates and talk about upcoming projects. I'd need help for that, though...
In reality, I know that I'm not enough to get such a thing going, but this is my dream. Make a nice place where anyone could learn things and stay for an indefinite amount of time if they have no other place to be. And be able to take a nice, hot shower.
If I really had a million subscribers? I'd probably go hide my head under my pillow and stop writing. Some of the stuff I write is too personal to want it in a million people's inboxes. I don't want to be a household name.
Maybe, what I'd do instead is to quit with the autobiographical stories and just post my fiction and art. Serialize one of my books under a paid subscription and then quit my job to write stories full time. I might also start a community for autistics, though whether that would be focused on writing, some other mission, or just a place to get to know each other and get support, I don't know.