How To Meet The Idiot Writing This Newsletter

Well, this should either go GREAT or TERRIBLY.

Hi! This is Mike from Everything Is Amazing.

For over a year now, I’ve been having what the LinkedIn folk would call “1-to-1 calls” on Zoom with this newsletter’s paying subscribers.

I call these Curiosity Calls, partly because sometimes we only get to find out what they’re about by having them!

(The general idea is: you may have a specific thing you want to ask me, or you may want to correct me on something I’ve written about - or you may just have a powerful urge to tell me to stop all this nonsense and get a real job. All are valid! But equally valid is turning up and not knowing what we’re going to talk about in advance - because, isn’t that what normally happens between two strangers, the kind you get chatting to on public transport, or at the pub? Isn’t that the default interaction between human beings in the ‘real world’?)

Every tranche* of these was a lot of fun. I did the first back in the British lockdown of mid-2020, posting a Calendly link on all my social channels in an attempt to Zoom-chat with total strangers.

Around a hundred calls later (most of them absolutely delightful), I had a full notebook of new ideas to read and write about, and a wonderful reappreciation of the fact that no, random strangers generally aren’t a bunch of terrifying lunatics, and Hanlon’s Razor usually applies.

(My friend Jodi, who has a flair for engineering conversations in the unlikeliest places, did something similar a few years previous to this, so I probably stole the idea from her - and also from comedian Dave Gorman, who famous went in search of other versions of himself.)

Now, just as a short-term experiment, I’m going to spent April and May opening up a bunch of these calls to - *gulp* - literally anyone?

Here’s the link to book a call.

(I figured that since I’ll mostly be here in Scotland reworking part of my storytelling course, and hopping on the odd plane to get myself used to flying again, I might as well make this time weird as well as productive.)

Since this newsletter is now going out to just under 30,000 people and any of you can book a call, I expect these to be snapped up pretty quickly!

Note: If you’re a paid subscriber to EiA, please feel free to grab one of these slots as well, or contact me directly so we can work out another time that’s better for a chat.

Also - if you see this as an opportunity to sell me your product or try to place sponsored posts in this newsletter: I’m maxed out with products, thanks, I don’t currently run advertising, thanks, and also, just no thanks. Let’s just be people, having an everyday people-like conversation?)

This should be fun.

Or bloody awful!

Only one way to find out, eh?

Thanks,

Mike

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*I’ve always wanted to use the word “tranche”. That made me feel very grown-up. Maybe not in a good way, though.