How a free daily writing ritual became a $500K community business

London Writers' Salon started as monthly meetups across London. Today it's a global community of 1,800 paying members generating half a million dollars annually—built around a deceptively simple ritual that happens four times every single day. Up to a thousand writers join across four time zones. Every day. Without fail.

Matt Trinetti and his co-founder Parul didn't build a course library or a content platform. They built a place where writers actually write—and then gave members the keys to run it.

In this episode:

• How a two-week experiment in March 2020 became a daily ritual that hasn't stopped since
• Why flipping from free to paid actually increased commitment rather than losing members
• How giving members ownership of the community reduced founder dependency and grew the business at the same time

The conversation doesn't stop here—join the discussion and ask the guest your own question at community.circle.so/c/behind-the-build

Behind the Build is a candid conversation series with the people behind thriving communities. Most communities look polished from the outside—this show goes inside. Each episode, we sit down with a community business founder and dig into a specific win: the real numbers, the honest decisions, and the messy middle that made it happen. No theory. No highlight reel. Just the actual story.

Hosted by the Circle community—where community builders come to build, grow, and connect.

New to Circle? Visit circle.so to learn more.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome to Behind the Build, the series where Circle creators share their biggest breakthroughs and what it really takes to build a thriving community business. My name is Mathilde, and I'm the head of community here at Circle. And today I am excited to be talking to Matt Trinelli, the founder of the London Writers Salon. Hi, Matt. Welcome to Behind the Build.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Hey Mathilde. So honored to be asked and yeah, so excited for this conversation. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

I am excited as well because you have a pretty unique story and growth journey. So you started a local meetup that turned into a global writing community that is, I believe, generating about half a million dollars in membership revenue. So there's a lot that I think we can all learn from that story. Let's start at the beginning. Can you tell us a bit about how and when it all started?

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Yeah. So London Writer Salon, I started with my co-founder Parl, and it actually started in London as an in-person event series in 2019. We both were writers and actually we were kind of budding writers and we wanted to be around more writers. And we were also meeting a lot of writers who were hungering for community and connection. And also selfishly, we just wanted to interview authors because we thought they were doing great work and we wanted to be closer with them. So we started a uh 2019 January. We did a little pop-up event in central London, and we called it Make 2019 Your Year of Writing. And we invited all the writers or potential writers who we've met we had met before into this event. And that was the beginning. It's January 2019. It's just this gathering around writing. And we invited some writers in and we had a conversation around it, around writing. And then we decided, oh, that that was that was great. So let's continue this. So every month in 2019, we did a meetup and held an event, and we got different places in London to host us. So we eventually were hosting them at like Soho House and the library, which is now going under. But anyway, so that's what London Writer Salon looked like when it started. It was an in-person local meetup for writers, uh, event series, author interview series. Um, so that's how it started. And that's kind of like London Writer Salon 1.0, and then London Writer Salon 2.0 launched in March 2020.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

So yeah, so something big happened in March 2020. So tell us a bit about that turning point for you. So you were doing a thriving, recurring meetup series in London in different places. Amazing pandemic happens, right? So how do you adapt to that?

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Yeah. And this and this was just a side project for both of us. It was, we had other jobs, we had other work, and this was just something on the side. And then, yeah, March 2020, it was the night before the UK was about to go into a COVID lockdown. And Parl and I got on the phone together and we just said, what, you know, what can we do for our community? How can we serve the writers who had come to events with us? And so we we first checked in with ourselves and just thought, what would we value right now? And maybe other people would value it. And so for us it was, well, let's just tomorrow morning at eight o'clock, uh, let's just get on a Zoom and let's journal together, let's write together, uh, do whatever you need to do, but we'll just write together in silence. And so we decided we would do that. And then we sent an email to everyone who had been to a past event with us and just said, invited them to this Zoom room and said, Hey, we're gonna write together in silence if you would value that eight o'clock, and we're gonna do it for two weeks. And we called it writer's hour. And so we sent that email out like nine o'clock Sunday night, pretty much expecting like no one to show up. Um, and even if it was just the two of us showing up, we'd be happy because we journal right together. Um, but I think about nine people came that first day. And then the next day, like 15 people were there, and then the third day, there was 20 people. So it kept growing. And that very first, I think it was the first or the second day, someone asked us. This was a free thing. We just opened up a free Zoom room and asked us, oh, I got I got more writing done in these 50 minutes because it was 50 focus minutes within the hour than I have like the last six months. Do you guys have a Patreon or something? Like, can I can I pay you basically? And we're like, no, but tomorrow we will. And so that was the the real indicator. I had done so many projects in my life that are kind of lukewarm. And so I felt there was real energy with this. There was heat. I'd never have had anyone asking if they could pay me for something. And so I we jumped on it. And so that next day we opened up our Patreon and then yeah, we we uh went through those two weeks of writers' hours and then used payment membership on Patreon to gauge if we should continue beyond the two weeks. And um, long story short, we've been running those silent writing sessions every day since March 2020, and actually we do them four times a day now.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Four times a day. That's great. And and all over the world, I mean, right now, give us a sense. Before we we talk a bit about like the transition and how you found circle, just give us a sense of scale today. How many members do you have? And yeah, what how often do they come together?

SPEAKER_00 5:07

Yeah, so we have um we have about 1800 paying members, and we have enough probably double to triple to quadruple that in non-paying participants. Um and our main drum beat still is writers' hour. And so every Monday to Friday, plus one on Saturday. Every Monday to Friday, though, that's the core drumbeat. 8 a.m. London, 8 a.m. New York, 8 a.m. Los Angeles, West Coast US, and 8 a.m. Melbourne, Australia, we host these silent writers' hours. And up to a thousand writers will join those across every day, across those four time zones. So that's the main drumbeat of what we do. And we still do it. We've been doing it nonstop for almost six years now. And then we've layered on top of that other stuff to help people go deeper: author interviews, workshops, the great stuff that Circle enables us to do with community meetups and and connection and and and all that great stuff. So it looks like, and this is a term I I learned only after starting this, is we are a community of practice. And I'm not sure how much that resonates with other communities built on circle, but we're a community of practice, meaning we are working on our own individual practices, and for us it's a writing practice, but there's a goal, there's an intention, there's a shared intention of making progress on writing. And so a lot of what we do is sitting together in the practice. And for us, that's writer's hour.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

I love that. I love that you started and then has grown a ritual into something that's now global, that but it's also happening at a recurring on a recurring basis, and that really gets people together to do something with a shared mission and a shared goal. This is definitely uh a real community of practice that you build.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Yeah, and and it's interesting too. I I just want to share because you know, there was a moment where when the pandemic was kind of, let's say, fizzling and people started to hunger to go back out in the world. We had a real kind of uh soul searching crisis moment where we thought, okay, well, i are we no longer relevant because we live online and there's a hunger to leave online and just like engage with the world again. But what we realized is that writing, even in the best of times, is still a lonely profession. Whether it is a profession or it's a hobby. And in the same way you might go to a yoga class or a gym class, you don't need those, but you're just more likely to follow through on the thing that you want to do when you do it in community in a way that's facilitated and scheduled. And so that's what we we realized in like 2021-22 when things started to open up that actually people weren't leaving and more people were still coming. So this is something that is a necessary thing, especially for writers.

SPEAKER_01 8:09

I love that. I think it speaks to the importance of community in in many fields, we need connection, we need belonging. But when you want to practice and actually get better at your craft, this is where community, there's sometimes no replacement to it. And even if getting building habit is is hard and it's something tough to crack, um, it's what when it goes back to this very deep need in belonging and practice, um, it can it can continue and and grow into becoming something really, really powerful. So I really love that.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Do you want to, Matt, take us behind the scenes? I would love to see how your community comes together today. Um, the main spaces, maybe the main rituals that you have. So you you have writers, you mentioned the drum beats of your community. I love that term, better than the ritual. So show us uh what that looks like in practice.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Yeah, uh I will share now. And I guess here, here we go. Yeah, so I the the one thing I do want to say, and which is I think maybe I don't know how unique this is for our community or not, but so here's you know our our main screen, the home screen. Looking at circle, sometimes it only tells part of the picture because of these writers hours that happened every day that thousands of people are joining um over Zoom. So it's like this is kind of the portal into the thing where people are seeing and being seen in this live room. Um, but all that to say, so here's here's our main screen. And uh I guess I'll share this is the main drumbeat. This is what I was talking about, writers hour. Um so every day we host four sessions a day. So this is uh we we we created this little embed calendar. Um you guys have a great calendar view as well, um, but I think we created this before that was implemented, so we just kept up with it. So these are the drum beats, and this is reflecting in my local time, which I'm in East Coast US. Uh, and so we've got the UK Writers Hour, the New York, LA, and Melbourne Writers Hour. So these are happening every day. Uh and so um, yeah, this is again one of the main drum beats. Um every day at Writers Hour, we also share, and this is, I think, one of our principles around community is every day to kick off a session, we share a quote about writing. But actually, 80% of those quotes are shared by the community. And so we have a forum where people can submit a quote to share. And so when we kick off that session, we're often handing the mic to someone. So, like on this day it was Nadine, on this day it was Barbara. And so we're we're giving lots of opportunities for the community to feel and really embody that this is their space. This isn't a guru top-down space. This is a many-to-many connection space. And so that's why I shared this. I'm just really proud of the words of wisdom that writers can share and and uh and and input every day to help inspire each other. Um so yeah, and just cut me off, Matilda, if you if you have any questions. Um but yeah, this is writers hour. So this is again our main main drumbeat. Um, we also host uh weekly events, and these usually fall in a few categories uh interview, QA, workshop, and then we have something called agent hour and editor hour. Uh so again, our community is writer, our writers, and so everything we do is trying just to serve writers. Uh so we've got the great events page, interviews coming up, agent hours, um, and uh yeah, and actually something we do annually is state of the salon. And so this is coming up in December as well. And this is a chance for us to share, Parl and I, in kind of inside look town hall with our community members about the future of London Writer Salon celebrating the year gone by. So this is one of our favorite things that we do. Um, so I just wanted to highlight that as well.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

I love that. I think the best communities are the ones that have this mix of different cadences of rituals. You have the daily, the weekly, the monthly, the maybe seasonal rituals. So it looks like you had a really healthy balance of those in your community.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

Yeah. And so I mentioned the writer's hour. That's our daily drumbeat. We also do a monthly goal setting workshop. So at the beginning of every month, we host a, and maybe I'll just click on it so we can see it in our recordings. Um, so we host a goal setting workshop. Oops, nope, here it is. Um, and so this again, this is uh it's free for members. It's also free for the public. Um, and and for us, this is a pretty good lead generation where this is an hour sharp, short, sharp workshop to help people decide their most important goal for the month ahead and then make a plan to deliver it. We give slides, we have a workbook, and it's a real community community thing. And so we do that every month is a goal setting workshop. So that's probably one of our favorite drum beats on the monthly end. And I do want to share, so we have the live events, which which I shared, something I'm really proud of, and I'm not sure how unique this is, but we host community meetups, and all of these, and there's actually more community meetups than there are official London Writer Salon events, every single one of these are hosted by members in our community. And so every day, so even let's see, December 7th, there's one, two, three, there's six events happening. Over the weekend, there's three events. Monday, there's five events, four events. Uh-huh. We have three Zoom rooms that are 24 hours and we give our community members keys to to host events. One of those Zoom rooms is called the Cabin, and that's for silent writing. So there's actually no events there. But if people want to write in silence outside of our writers' hours, they can go into the cabin and we've turned the audio off and people just write together in silence. And actually, here, I'm just gonna click on it here. So this is the cabin. Another Zoom room that's 24 hours is our cafe, and this is where a lot of communities, community members will host meetups. And so all of these meetups typically they're hosted in the cafe. And again, it's a 24-hour Zoom room. We give them the keys to, and they can schedule and have these meetups. And then because these rooms were so oversubscribed, we had to create a third. And so our third is the library. And so, what the library is, this is more of like a scheduled uh small group meetups. And so, if you just want to meet with your writing group, you can schedule time, book time in the library and then gather there. So these are kind of more private sessions in the library. So I just want to share that because it's one of the things I'm most proud of is how we empower members to actually host their own meetups and uh and give them a space in the community to um to rise and to take some ownership.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Matt, this is fantastic. I want to zoom in on the term that you used, member-led, and all the things that you've showed us so far really show that you build a community with your members, not just for them. There are things they can do, meetups they can run, quotes they can share. Um, and it's obviously something that I think as community builders, we all want to have, and we all want to have yesterday, right? But it's it's tough thing to crack for many of us. So I'm curious to hear how did that approach evolved, or as in, was it always like that from the start? And if not, were the things that you did, the decisions that you took that really helped um that member-led culture to thrive.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Yeah, I'm I'm not sure when or where that started. And maybe it's so even before Lunder Brighter Salon, I was, and we were talking a little bit before this, I was living in London and and was helping grow a community uh at a place called Escape the City. And so through years of experience of running community, building programs, gathering people, running events, I think I learned, and this is again just my perspective, and we have a great team of people who embody this, but my perspective is I learned I learned some principles on how to build community. And in particular, I learned that when people feel a sense of ownership about the place, then they're just more likely to show up and tell other people to come gather. And so we were really deliberate to create this as a space to see and be seen. And so to give people a chance to share input. And so even from like day one, um, well, we we started collating those quotes, but pretty soon people would start to email us and say, Hey, here I found this great quote about writing. Maybe this would be good for words of wisdom. And we at every step of the way, we try to get out of our own way in a way. And if people offer ideas, offer suggestions, we just try to make it really easy to say thank you, and that's a great idea. Let's run with it. Obviously, within guardrails. Um, and there's actually a really great book that I'm I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with called The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker. There's so many principles in there that that she talks about. Um, so yeah, it's that yeah. So a lot of that was learned through experience or through books or just kind of following our nose.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Amazing book, an amazing reminder and reference. Priya actually spoke at a circle summit just a few weeks ago. So fantastic framework for sure. So really empowering your members to take ownership if I'm if I'm hearing this right, and not being afraid of or not trying to control the conversation. So this is what I'm hearing, because I think sometimes, really when you're getting started, you want to maybe have a polished community with everything in the right place and everything happening at the right time, but sometimes getting our own way. This is getting our own way doing that. I don't think I'm just re-using your words here. So it is interesting.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Uh also, I mean, there this is I think the tight line to balance as a community builder because you at once have to hold both a vision and you have to lead, but at the same time you have to you'll be your own bottleneck if you rely on that too much. And so to decide what are the guardrails in which there's a lot of freedom. And uh when people offer ideas, at the very least, you listen and you thank them and uh and hopefully you implement them because if you are truly trying to be of service, if you're truly trying to help the people that you're trying to serve, um you'll listen to them because they're giving you clues on what they need. And that actually every step of the way with Writer's Hour, we've we viewed it more like cultivating a garden. And we were listening. And by being in the room with the people we aim to serve every day in the chat, we got to see what they're working on, where they're struggling, what their dreams and hopes are. And then we would just take that input and say, hey, we see a lot of you are working on this. We've decided to bring this person in to have a conversation about it. And when you continue that cycle of people share something and you actually listen and you, you, you reflect back to them something that helps them, you just build a lot of trust, you build a lot of momentum. That's our experience. So it's it actually makes building a lot easier because you don't have to have the answers. All you have to do is listen. And then I consider it like building gifts, creating, giving gifts to the people you aim to serve. Um, and it's a great joy.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

I I love the way you frame not letting your vision being a bottleneck. Is there a time where you felt that happen? That now in hindsight, you realize this is something that, you know, is to be avoided. But I'm curious, also for the people out there who are in the midst and the messy middle of building something where maybe engagement is not exactly where it should be. Maybe they're trying different things and none of them are really landing. So is there a moment where you tried something maybe because you were too close to this, this has to be this way, or or from the start, it was pretty pretty good that you were, you know, flexible?

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Yeah. I'll I'll say there's definitely things that like land more than others. Sometimes you never really know. So sometimes you think this is really going to land and then it doesn't. And other times you you think this might not land and then it does. So some of it like you kind of I've kind to kind of had to relinquish the the concept that I know. And and really, the quicker you can put something out there, the quicker, quicker you'll you'll learn, obviously. But I find we're a lot more likely to create things that land when we are truly doing things in response to the things that people are saying they want and need. And again, I whenever someone like wants to build anything, I always ask them, like, what is your writer's hour? What is your, and maybe it's not a daily drumbeat, but what is your drumbeat, your consistent thing that you can provide value for the people you aim to serve while also being in the room with them and you can hear where they're struggling. It's not, oh, we're gonna send a survey out once a month or once a year. It's like, no, I'm sitting in the room with you and I'm not afraid to ask, like, you know, where are you stuck? What are you working on? And then when they say this, like immediately providing a solution in the form of a connection, in the form of, that's a great idea. We're gonna reach out to this author and see if they can come in. So it's really not being afraid to sit in the room virtually or physically with the people you aim to serve and just ask them, like, how come we serve you? Like, how what do you need? What are you looking for? And actually go do and do those things. You don't have to know the answer. You just have to ask and then like actually care enough to serve.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

So well said. I wouldn't I wouldn't add a thing. So, Matt, at behind the build, we love talking about business models and and how community builders can build not just communities, but real businesses that are sustainable. So I'm curious to hear a bit about the business side of things. So you said earlier you have paid members, free members. Can you walk us through your different tiers or offerings, how much they cost?

SPEAKER_00 22:11

Yeah. And maybe it's useful to share too. So writer's hour, it started free, which I mentioned. And then when that one person said, Do you have a Patreon? Can we support you? We then we had that. So for the first year, year and a half, it was this is free, but you can pay to donate. And and which some people did, obviously. However, uh, maybe a year and a half, two years in, we we flipped it where we said, here's how much it costs, but if you don't have the finances, we'll give it to you for free. And so what that did is that that we realized that we were creating something of value and we were undervaluing it. And so by just putting a price tag on it, but also allowing us to be very generous. So basically, no questions asked, let us know if you want it for free. And actually, we would just give away a code, your choice, use the code or pay for it. And we found a lot of people wanted to pay for it. Number one, because it's a proxy to a commitment to themselves and their goals. And so by them paying money, and for us it's nine pounds a month, which is roughly $12 a month, for that tier of membership, which is writer's hour. That says something to them as a writer, to say, I'm serious enough about this that I'm willing to pay this very small fee to do it. So we made that switch. I just thought that was important to share because it did change a lot for us when we did. We have two other tiers. So that's the one tier is writer's hour. You get unlimited access to all the writing, silent writing sessions, plus a few spaces in circle, like a chance to share your work. We have a space for that, a chance uh to hear about paid writing opportunities. So you get access at that first tier. We then also have uh a second and third tier that we call silver and gold. And this is still a hangover of our Patreon days. So we're actually in the process of shifting these this nomenclature, but right now, silver and won't hold it against you, don't worry. Yeah. Um, yeah. So silver is 29 pounds a month, and which is roughly like 35, 37. And that gets you access to all the live events, recording. We have about 350 recordings of workshops, interviews, uh, all the spaces, uh, all the meetups. So basically anything that is more insights, more community, more connection, that's at the silver level. And then the top level is gold, and that's 97 pounds a month, which is roughly about, let's say, $135, I believe. And that includes everything. Plus, we do weekly group coaching. So every Monday and Friday, we hold sessions with uh accomplished editors and authors. And they host these sessions in a group setting where you can join on Monday. It's a chance to set your intention, your goal for the week. And on Friday, it's a chance to celebrate what you did or what you didn't do. And both Monday and Friday, it's a chance to share anywhere you're feeling blocked and stuck. And so it's a really valuable session to really that's the the weekly drumbeat, to stay committed to your goal for the week.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

I love that. I love how your different tiers are really showing a progression of. So we often say that in a community's offering, you have experiences, resources, and connections or a mix of those different things at different levels. And so as you go up in tiers, you have more connection opportunities or more community-led opportunities, right? To to practice and learn from others. So I love that Wikigupa coaching that you start to trust about.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Yeah, that's a great point. And actually, that all came from all of these things came from Writer's Hour because we knew people were on Mondays, they were struggling to like define their goal for the week. Like, I don't know what I'm focusing on, and I'm feeling stuck. So we thought, well, let's create a forum where if you for our top-tier members, um, you can share that and you can get coached and and you can be in a room of other people who also have a shared intention. So every step of the way, that the escalating need state, we've made sure to provide a tier at the trying to find the appropriate value of that, which is a uh in art and a science, maybe. Um, we've provided that. So it's yeah, very much having empathy. And I think this is where Parl and I, and then everyone on our team being writers, we have deep empathy with the struggles of a writer. So I know how hard it is to stay committed to the writing when no one's asking for it. So, how do we create something that helps other people based on that sense of need and empathy?

SPEAKER_01 26:45

I love it. So, writer's hour was really how you added and continue adding value to your members, but also how you got all the feedback to really shape your offering and evolve that offering into something sustainable, profitable. What is the different, what is your strategy today? Do people, or are you trying to get more people into the lower tier and then upgrade? Are you trying to now go after more, you know, the gold tier? And what does that look like for you and your team?

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Yeah, there, so we actually want to move a little bit away from right now. Writer's hour is that's our biggest lead gen right now, is people try it. We have a uh seven, we have 14 or 7-day trial. We're kind of experimenting with both. Free trial. You can try writer's hour. And at the end of that, you'll then be prompted. Do you want to continue or do you not have the finances? Here's a free code. So that is our biggest lead gen thing right now. We're actually in the process of developing what are some other lead gen things, resources, free courses, email courses. We don't have those yet, but that's our hunch, is to start to develop other things that the writer's hour doesn't have to be the core lead gen thing, but it still is because people feel the value and then they want to contribute. And then once they're in that ecosystem, we have a lot of things that share all the stuff that you could be getting access to that you might not. So every we have a uh email that goes out called the Daily Writer, and that includes the quote of the day and then lists all the events coming up and all the resources, the recordings from the last week. And so if you click on that, you'll see a locked screen if you don't have access. So trying to get people into that fold, that might be enough for some people, but we're always pointing to all the other great stuff that's happening. And if that feels aligned for their goals and what they need, then hopefully they'll upgrade.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

Got it. And you're doing a lot. You have a lot of events, a lot of different rituals, and um, you talked a bit about the workshops, the coaching sessions. I'm curious to hear what did you find most helpful or valuable in Circle as a platform in making all of this or in bringing all of this to life?

SPEAKER_00 28:59

Yeah, I mean, well, I I did mention Patreon at the beginning. Pretty quickly, we realized there were many limitations with Patreon. In particular, we wanted like a hub to be able to share resources and also a hub where people can connect with each other. And so we had cobbled together like Patreon and Slack, and it was just, this doesn't feel right. And so when we learned about Circle, it was not only a place that we could house all of our great resources, plus, then you started rolling out live event features, plus you know, automation. So every step of the way, it feels like the way that you all are building for community builders, it feels very much the way in which we're building our community for our writers, is you're obviously listening to what people need and want because every time there's a new release, I'm always like, yes, this is exactly what we need. Thank you. Um, so yeah, we're every time you guys release something, I'm just constantly leaning into it. So my favorite feature are is the one that you're releasing, like landing pages. That's one we're finding great value in right now. Automations, um, broadcast emails. We we finally let go of MailChimp and have invested uh fully into Circle. So just like keep releasing great stuff and and you know, hopefully we'll all the other software we're like slowly just condensing it into one with you guys.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

I'd love to hear that. You know, it's it's been the vision of circle from day one, right? Becoming that all-in-one complete community platform that helps you kill those other tools and not spend money across different subscriptions, but also really just um focus your time on what you want to do, building community, gathering your members, connecting them, and not stitching different tools together or building automations in five different places, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Yeah. And that's I think where we're at right now is we've we've been growing steadily. We are bootstrapped, we're it's at a pace that we feel comfortable, it's organic. But if we look to what if we were to scale or like more deliberately scale, one of the I think obstacles to that is complexity. And when you have complexity in the form of all these different softwares, it just makes it a lot more difficult to try to scale. So that's been part of our phase right now is like preparing to scale, which means like removing any external software and leaning into circle as much as we can.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

I love that. And I have a question about scaling for the end of this conversation. We're actually nearing the end of the conversation, unfortunately. We've covered a lot of ground today, but I know you have tons more to share. So I want to just hear from you what would be your top piece of advice for someone looking to build a community of practice like yours? You covered already a lot of different tips earlier, but what would be one tip that you would give someone who is just getting started today?

SPEAKER_00 31:51

Yeah, I think starting, my question would go back again to what is your writer's hour equivalent? What is the thing that provides tremendous value for the people they're serving and their goals while also allowing you to be a fly on the wall, to be in the room with them, to listen to them, to see where they're struggling. Be in the room with the people you aim to serve as as often as possible. And I'm not sure what that looks like across the different you know practices. Um and I think the other insight and and where we're trying to lean to is we want to be viewed as a a lifestyle necessity, not a nice to have subscription. And I think the close the the the the way you can do that is to really drill into what is the necessity, what is the lifestyle, the the people you're aiming to serve, what lifestyle event or environment are you trying to create? And for us, it's people who want to dedicate themselves to a writing practice, whether that's a hobby or professionally. And so how do we do that as best as possible? So yeah, those are questions. It's like, what's your your consistent drumbeat to serve your people? And then how can you be positioned as a lifestyle necessity, not a nice-to-have subscription?

SPEAKER_01 33:11

What a fantastic. I asked for one piece of advice and you gave a full strategy strategic uh lens on building community. I love that. We we often talk about signature gatherings at circle rituals. So definitely that echoes what you just shared. And the lifestyle necessity, I love that. It's really encouraging us all to think about making your community a no-brainer, something that you can't live without or work or grow without, right? Versus something that you just jump in and out when those communities exist as well, but they're not necessarily the ones that we pay for, right?

SPEAKER_00 33:44

And can I share one more thing? Because with every event, and maybe not 100% of our events, how how can we make it where when someone leaves that event, they've made progress on the goal. So they haven't just downloaded or listened to something, they've actually made progress on something. And when you do that enough times, that feedback loop is really strong. So I know when I show up to this space, I'm not just getting more input or insight. I've actually taken one step closer to my goal. And that's what Writer's Hour provides. You come in there not having written, and you leave having something written. You're moving closer to your goal. You haven't just attended another course that gives you more information that then you need to action outside of that. How do we help people make a step, even if it's tiny, inside the room before they leave?

SPEAKER_01 34:37

Amazing. It's all about transformation, right? Making progress or the ultimate transformation that the community is is designed to help your members accomplish.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

Yes. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

Matt, what's next for you and this community? You talked a bit about scaling, wanting to scale. What does that look like for you in the year ahead?

SPEAKER_00 34:56

Yeah, so we've fully uh we've upgraded to enterprise. So we're we're we're committed. So we're in this phase right now, is like simplifying our systems, removing what's not necessary. So we're in that place. Um and we're actually so we're we have two really big seasons in our community, in our business. It's January and September. January, because it's New Year's, new intentions, resolutions, and a lot of those for people are writing goals. And September, it's uh kind of back to school vibes, and also last quarter of the year where people are feeling a little anxious, they haven't finished their goals. So those are two big moments. We're in December. January is around the corner, so we're planning for a really exciting year ahead. And one of the things we're aiming to do, which we haven't done before, is to sell, try to sell in annual memberships. We've we're very much monthly. Let's say 80% of our subscriptions are monthly. So we're doing, we're lining up a really exciting year ahead. So in January, we can say, join us for a year, you'll get a discount, you'll get a special gift. Because we can say you're going to get all these things over the year. So we've never done that before. So I'm I'm excited to see how that goes. Hopefully, fingers crossed. It's it's it's nice. Um and something we haven't talked about is we have a our we introduced a high-ticket product called the Residency. We ran our first one this year, and we're gonna run the second one next year, and it's a small cohort of people, five times the price of anything we've charged. And um, it's people who are in the middle of a book who want to get to the end. And they get a private coach, they get weekly sessions, editorial feedback from each other. So it's a really stepping up the value, and we've been really surprised at how popular that's been. So I'm excited about that because launching a big ticket product can feel scary. And I'm happy that this is working and I'm excited for more of that. So those are two things I'm excited about right now.

SPEAKER_01 36:57

Amazing. Well, I'm excited by proxy, Matt. I'm really excited to see this vision come to life. It it's it's uh striking how clear the vision is, both on the mission and transformation, but also internally the strategy and and and your focus are we as for for the year ahead. So I hope that maybe next year or maybe a bit before even we can chat again and see where you're at with the residency, the writer's hour, and and everything in between.

SPEAKER_00 37:21

We'd love to, Matilda. Yeah, I appreciate this. I I hope it's been helpful. Um and yeah, just uh I'm I'm open book and would love to help other community members and organizers. So um always happy to help.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

It has been incredibly helpful, insightful, Matt. So we will publish this episode and also link out to all of your links where people can find you online. Uh, can people also maybe message you in the circle community if they have a question? Is that something you're open to?

SPEAKER_00 37:48

Yeah, absolutely. Uh message me in circle. Also, hello at LondonWritersSalon.com. That's me and my co-founder on the other end. Always, always happy to connect and and also invite people to join us at Writers Hour. It's a really great, great space to make progress on any any sort of creative work.

SPEAKER_01 38:05

Amazing. Fantastic, Matt. Thank you so much for taking us behind the build today and have a great rest of your day.

SPEAKER_00 38:10

Thank you, Mathilde. Really appreciate it.