Find your voice. Change the world.
Your Hosts
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| Pace Smith |
Kyeli Smith |
The Speakers
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| Chris Guillebeau |
Jonathan Fields |
Danielle LaPorte |
Colleen Wainwright |
Jennifer Louden |
Truant |
Featuring Bonus Material From
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| Daniel Quinn |
Deb Ng |
Nathalie Lussier |
Becky Blanton |
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| Kelly Kingman |
Ali Hale |
Elizabeth Potts Weinstein |
Sonia Simone |
The world could use a helping hand, don’t you think?
Poverty, cruelty, destruction of the environment, racism, war, and lots of people generally being mean to each other. It feels immense and daunting.
What can you do about it?
You can write.
“If the world is to be changed, it will be changed not by old minds with new programs, but by new minds with no programs at all.”
- Daniel Quinn
The world doesn’t need a change of regime. The world doesn’t need a change of policies. Those may help the symptoms, but they won’t cure the disease.
What the world needs is a change of mind.
Imagine a world where every single person is a little bit kinder. Imagine a world where every single person is a little more open-minded. Together, we can create this world, one reader at a time.
It’s hard to be a writer in this day and age, with all the people who say that you can’t make a living as a writer, and even worse, all the people who say you can’t make a difference as “just” a writer.
You’ll show ‘em.
If you’re passionate about learning the craft of world-changing writing, we’ll teach you the skills you need to know to make it happen.
And if you’re terrified about the very idea of world-changing writing, we’ll help you explore that resistance in a safe and supportive environment.
So, how will we do it? What makes the difference between writing and world-changing writing?
These five things are what make the difference.
The Five Keys to World-Changing Writing
1. Persuasion. Writing that makes people jump out of their seats and take action.
2. Fans. Finding and growing your right audience.
3. Getting it done. Creating a writing practice that works for you.
4. Safety. Making writing comfortable instead of terrifying for you.
5. Authenticity. Writing from your heart and using your own experiences to create awareness and change in others.
Luckily, PFGSA doesn’t make a trendy acronym. (That doesn’t stop Pace from trying to pronounce it, though. And please don’t tell her that we could move the A.)
If you lack any one of these five key ingredients, the recipe falls flat. (Or burns. Or ends up with a vaguely unfulfilling doughy texture.) Without an audience, your writing won’t reach anyone. Without persuasion, your readers will say “Hmm” and go back to their lives untouched. Without an effective writing practice, you’ll only make progress in fits and starts — you won’t be able to sustain it. Without safety, you’ll be paralyzed by fear and indecision. And without authenticity, you can’t connect deeply with anyone – and your audience won’t trust you.
We’ve gathered six experts who, along with the two of us, will teach you the craft of world-changing writing. We hand-picked each expert because of their knowledge and experience in one of these five keys to world-changing writing. Together, we’ll teach you what you need to know.
“I thought it was amazing. Truly. The quality was directly related to the superstar speakers you got. They were wonderful.”
Megan Matthieson, idanceiwrite.com
The How, the Where, and the When
The 2010 World-Changing Writing Workshop was a grand success! After it ended, we packaged it up into the 2010 World-Changing Writing Workshop-In-A-Box.
The World-Changing Writing Workshop-In-A-Box consists of seven well-edited audio recordings, one for each speaker. Each recording is about an hour long: a presentation by the speaker (including some interaction with Pace & Kyeli) followed by a brief Q&A period. You also get a complete transcript of each session.
The entire Workshop is virtual. You don’t need to travel or even leave the comfort of your own home. All the workshop materials are downloads and are in MP3 or PDF format. You get the entire workshop-in-a-box the instant you purchase it.
“I was one of those folks that couldn’t be on most of the live calls during the work day so I downloaded and listened later. I thought all of the speakers were truly great and covered a range of topics that all related back to the core. I thought your questions all provoked very thoughtful answers and were many of the things I was wondering about. I just thought the whole program was well worth the money and I would definitely do it again.”
Alison Ivy Seligson, cashflowgal.com
The Who and the What
Do you want to find and grow an audience for your writing?
Do you feel like the outside world keeps disconnecting you from “writing space”, and you have trouble getting reconnected?
Do you wonder how you could use a blog for writing and connecting with your readers?
Introducing Chris Guillebeau!
Chris Guillebeau is a writer who helps people live unconventional lives, make their own choices, and change the world.
He’s done a bunch of amazing things in his life, like his quest to visit every country in the world within 5 years (he’s two years in and two-thirds of the way there). One of the most amazing (and most relevant) is that in just one year, he has built a new career for himself and is now making a full-time living as a professional world-changing writer.
Consider Chris’s World Domination Manifesto, a perfect example of his world-changing writing. With over 100,000 downloads, it has changed the lives of thousands of people, including yourses truly — it was part of the inspiration for our very own Freak Revolution Manifesto.
In Session #1, Chris will teach you how to build a writing career from anywhere.
Are you feeling pulled in two directions, trying to write boldly and persuasively while still being authentic?
Are you frustrated with your attempts to encourage others to not just share your vision, but to jump in and help to make it happen?
Are you scratching your head trying to figure out what inspires people to actually go do something?
Introducing Jonathan Fields!
About a dozen years ago, Jonathan Fields left his job as a mega-firm lawyer to rebuild his living around what he loved to do and the people he loved to be around. Since then, he’s become a husband, dad, entrepreneur, author, blogger, copywriter, marketer, speaker, and even yoga teacher.
He is the author of Career Renegade, one of the top 10 small business books of 2009. More importantly than that, his words have inspired a whole bunch of people to quit their jobs and make a living doing what they love. Now that’s world-changing writing!
In Session #2, Jonathan will teach you how to make people jump out of their seats and take action by integrating layers of persuasion into your writing.
Are you taking for granted the things you may have to share in your writing, because you don’t realize they are special and helpful to share?
Do you feel frustrated trying to develop your own voice? Do you often end up writing in a professional/business voice or emulating someone else’s voice instead?
Are you hungry to learn how to channel the writing you love into something that could support you?
Introducing Danielle LaPorte!
Danielle LaPorte of White Hot Truth is a writer, inspirational speaker, marketer, and world-changer.
She headed her own communications agency for ten years, telling the stories of world-changing people, like a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and the Pulitzer-winning co-founder of Greenpeace. She is the lead author of the Amazon bestseller Style Statement: Live By Your Own Design, and has been featured in Elle, Vogue Australia,
She exudes passion and authenticity from every pore. Her goal is to liberate truth, raw reality, and grace. She believes that the desire to be real is everyone’s divine imperative. And she makes some really kick-ass note cards.
In Session #3, Danielle will get down with the nitty-gritty of world-changing writing. The pros and cons of self-publishing, mainstream publishing, and building a blog into a business. Concrete action steps to choose a topic, find an audience, and get your shit out there.
Are you afraid that your life is too boring to squeeze anything exciting out of? Would you love to learn how to mine your life for compelling stories?
Are you puzzled about how to produce powerful, persuasive prose?
Are you wondering how the heck to get your work in front of the right readers?
Introducing Colleen Wainwright! 
Colleen Wainwright is a writer-speaker-performer who also goes by “The Communicatrix” (because it’s shorter and has fewer hyphens).
She spent 10 years as an award-winning TV copywriter, crafting ads for big brands and writing episodes for children’s shows. Then she spent another 10 years acting in them. Finally, she realized she’d rather expire on the spot than sit through one more meeting about which way the bears danced around the cereal box. So she quit, and started something entirely different.
She now spends most of her time teaching other creative souls how to write in a way that wins them attention, work, and satisfaction, still demonstrating unreasonable optimism in the face of doom – which is one of our favorite things about her.
In Session #4, Colleen will teach you how to draw your right audience to you by telling a powerful, compelling story.
Do you feel like sharing your writing with the world would be like cracking open your soul and letting everyone see it?
Do you keep putting off writing til tomorrow – but tomorrow never happens?
Does your writing well dry up when you’re afraid, uncomfortable, or stuck?
Introducing Jennifer Louden!
Jen is a best-selling author. She wrote The Woman’s Comfort Book, The Woman’s Retreat Book, and a bunch of other great books. She’s written for Body+Soul and been quoted in Woman’s Day, People, Health, Yoga Journal, Good Housekeeping, Shape, and Ladies Home Journal. She hosts an annual Writer’s Retreat that is simply fantastic. She was totally on Oprah, and she’s been on CNN, MS-NBC, and dozens of other shows.
And she would totally smack us if she caught us writing this bio of her because she’s ridiculously humble.
But the most important thing about Jen is that when she writes, it feels like she’s writing to you. Not to an audience of millions. Just you. It feels like she’s sitting there in your living room and you’re having a lovely chat over a cup of tea.
Yes – in Session #5, she’ll show you how to connect with your readers like that. She’ll also share ways to make writing comfortable instead of terrifying, how to write when you’re feeling stuck, and how to stop putting it off til tomorrow.
Do you feel lost when trying to find the intersection of what you want to write and what people want to read?
Do you have trouble adapting to different situations (e.g. marketing vs. storytelling, fiction vs. non-fiction) without losing the uniqueness of your voice?
Are you worried that you don’t know how to say “Please buy my stuff” without sounding like an asshole?
Introducing Johnny B. Truant!
Johnny writes for some of the biggest websites on the internet and built a six-figure online business within a year. He built an enormous audience in record time, starting from practically nothing.
That’s impressive and all, but we don’t really care.
What we want Johnny to tell you is how he found his niche. How he started out writing to a small audience about what he loved (humor) and tweaked it into writing for a huge audience about other things he’s interested in (technology and business) without losing any of his authenticity, without losing any of his hilarious and distinctive style, and without losing any of his heart.
“All I can be is me. If that means writing jokes that 2 out of 100 people are going to get, then that’s what I’ll do. And I’ll swear on a business blog if I damn well please.” – Johnny B. Truant
In Session #6, Johnny will explain how to find your niche, and how to avoid selling your soul in the process.
Would you like to learn how to write a book, in baby steps, without sequestering yourself away from the world on a writing retreat?
Would you like to write a manifesto that will inspire and move people?
Do you feel bogged down by the immense task of changing the world? Do you wonder how you can stay positive during the long haul?
Introducing Pace and Kyeli!
Hey, that’s us! We’ve got a lot to say about world-changing writing, too.
We’ve written a book, The Usual Error: Why We Don’t Understand Each Other And 34 Ways To Make It Better. We’ve written an eBook, 52 Weeks to Awesome. And we’ve written the Freak Revolution Manifesto. We’re honored to say that each of these works, in different ways, has changed the lives of many people.
We created the Freak Revolution to change the world, and writing is the main tool we use to accomplish our goal.
In Session #7, we’ll teach you how to make your world-changing writing practice sustainable, and how to choose the flavor of writing that works best for you.
“I loved Jen’s talk and Pace & Kyeli’s talk immensely. Both of those sessions were EXCELLENT and helped me feel encouraged and gave me new things to think about.”
Ellie Di Julio, thewholestylenetwork.com
To recap the speakers:
Session #1: Chris Guillebeau, Building a Writing Career From Anywhere
Session #2: Jonathan Fields, Integrating Layers of Persuasion
Session #3: Danielle LaPorte, The Nitty-Gritty of World-Changing Writing
Session #4: Colleen Wainwright, Telling a Compelling Story
Session #5: Jennifer Louden, Connection and Comfort
Session #6: Johnny B. Truant, Finding Your Niche
Session #7: Pace and Kyeli, Keep Going, Keep Growing
“I loved the insight and the variety of speakers. Each one truly came from a different background and had something unique to say… it was great to get a variety of opinions on world changing writing, and how I can apply those principles and ideas to my own writing goals. Being a commercial writer I’m so used to writing fulfilling one area… but this has helped bridge the gap. I look forward to making changes based on what I’ve learned.”
Courtney Ramirez, towardbetterhealth.com
Once you learn what all these experts have to share with you, you’ll have everything you need to do some world-changing writing yourself.
…except for one thing. There’s still one last thing these experts have that you don’t. Practice.
The World-Changing Writing Workbook
That’s why you’ll get The World-Changing Writing Workbook as a companion piece to the workshop. It contains an overview of the material covered in the workshop, some additional tips and tricks that aren’t covered anywhere else, and 14 writing exercises.
Each speaker has contributed 2 exercises to the workbook: a warm-up exercise for you to complete before their session, and a wrap-up exercise for after their session. Each exercise is hand-crafted by each speaker to enable you to practice the concepts they’re teaching. Finish all 14 and you’ll be well on your way to world-changing writing!
If you’d like, you can have the first two chapters of the World-Changing Writing Workbook for free, right now. We’ve broken them out into a special report we call The Five Keys to World-Changing Writing. Click here to download it for free.
Also, you can sign up here to receive one of the actual seven workshop sessions. It’s Session #3, Danielle LaPorte, The Nitty-Gritty of World-Changing Writing. We asked the students at the live workshop which session they’d most like to share with you, and this was the one they chose. Thanks to their generosity, you can get a free sample of exactly what’s inside the Workshop-In-A-Box.
We hope these free things will help you change the world with your writing!
But before you go, we’d love to help you even more than that.
When you buy the World-Changing Writing Workshop In-A-Box, you’ll get the whole workbook (all 63 pages and 8,300 words), recordings of all 7 sessions (edited to reduce “um”s, stuttering, and long pauses), and transcripts of all 7 sessions (nicely formatted and well-indexed).
We built this course to help you, so we want to make sure that you get what will help you the most.
The World-Changing Writers Guild
It can be daunting to do it alone, though.
That’s why we created a members-only forum, The World-Changing Writers Guild, for people who purchase this workshop. We’ve got a great group growing, and we want to help you connect with each other. The forum is the perfect place to form a writing group, find a partner to work through the exercises with, or get accountability for going through the workshop material at your own pace.
There are currently 89 members on the World-Changing Writers Guild. Many of the graduates of the live version of the 2010 World-Changing Writing Workshop chose to stick around to connect with and help out new members, so you’ll have some more experienced writers there as well as others who are just starting out. We (Pace and Kyeli) will be on the forum, too.
We’ll give you full access to the forum as soon as you buy the Workshop-In-A-Box.
“What I loved most was that you were open to being wrong. So many people who run workshops think ‘I hadn’t thought of that’ is a forbidden phrase.”
Chris Anthony, delightspecialist.com
Learning world-changing writing is a big investment.
How else would you learn the craft of world-changing writing? If you paid for a one-on-one session with any of our guest speakers, it would cost you up to $500 just for one hour. And some them don’t even do one-on-one sessions.
We’re confident that this workshop — 7 hour-long sessions, 7 transcripts, plus the World-Changing Writing Workbook, plus access to the forum — will help you far more than just one hour with one world-changing writer. We’ve bundled it all together for $297.
Bonus!
Seven sessions is a perfect length for a writing workshop, but we had lots more material we wanted to cover. So we’re throwing in a bunch of bonuses for you! A lot of these are very specific and focused on a particular aspect of world-changing writing. Don’t worry if not all of them are applicable to you or your situation, but we hope you’ll find some of them to be a perfect fit!
Bonus #1: Daniel Quinn, World-Changing Writing
Daniel Quinn wrote Ishmael and The Story of B, two of the books that inspired us to create the Freak Revolution. He’s the first person who comes to our minds when we hear the phrase “world-changing writer,” and it’s an honor to have him as part of this workshop.
He prefers text to voice, so we interviewed him via email. We asked him the very best questions we could come up with to guide aspiring world-changing writers, and we think you’ll find his answers intriguing, inspiring, and useful.
Bonus #2: Deb Ng, Freelance Writing
Deb Ng is the founder of Freelance Writing Jobs, the #1 site on the internet for freelancers looking for writing work. We interviewed her about how to create a successful freelance writing career, and how you can change the world as a freelance writer.
Deb is fun, inspirational, and chock full of useful information. It was a pleasure to squeeze some of it out of her.
Bonus #3: Nathalie Lussier, Creating Lasting Change
Nathalie Lussier is the Raw Foods Witch. She helps people eat more healthy raw foods. As such, she’s an expert in writing in a way that inspires people to make lasting change in their lives. We interview her about this particular flavor of persuasive writing — not moving people to take action right now, but moving people to change their lifestyles.
She shares a lot of wisdom in this interview, and her cuteness will infect you even over the internet.
Bonus #4: Becky Blanton, Hot-Button Issues
Becky Blanton is an award-winning journalist who spoke at TED about her experience of being homeless. Her TED talk moved us to tears.
Readers usually react to a hot-button issue like homelessness by putting up shields and distancing themselves. How does Becky tell a controversial story in a way that creates change instead of defensiveness? She’ll tell you in this interview, and she’ll explain it in a clear and precise way so that you can do it too.
Bonus #5: Elizabeth Potts Weinstein, Authenticity
Elizabeth Potts Weinstein is an author, speaker, coach, mom, attorney, radio show host, aspiring adventurer, people-loving introvert, and truth evangelist. She helps people make a greater difference in the world and become more successful and fulfilled, by doing what is a natural extension of who they really are.
Her mantra is “Live Your Truth”, so she was an obvious choice to interview about authenticity. We talk about what it means to live your truth, how to figure out what the heck your truth is, and how being authentic can change the world.
Bonus #6: Kelly Kingman, eBooks and Stickiness
Kelly Kingman of Sticky eBooks helps people write. As you might have guessed, her specialty is helping people write eBooks. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, American Way magazine, and Gourmet, among others.
We interviewed her about how to write a successful eBook, and about what makes any type of writing “sticky” — what makes it stick in the minds of readers. We also talk about how to figure out what medium is right for you: eBook, tree book, blog, or something else entirely.
Bonus #7: The Sticky eBook Formula
It only makes sense that Kelly has written an eBook about how to write a sticky eBook. It’s called The Sticky eBook Formula. It usually sells for $27, and you get it for free with the World-Changing Writing Workshop-In-A-Box. About half the material is eBook-specific, and half is generally applicable to making your writing sticky.
The Sticky eBook Formula is designed to get your brilliant thoughts out of your head and into an eBook, in a way that lets the world know you mean business. It outlines a 5-step process that takes you from concept to finished book, and gives you lots of strategies to make your ideas sticky and powerful.
Bonus #8: Ali Hale’s The Blogger’s Guide To Effective Writing
Ali Hale’s 82-page Blogger’s Guide To Effective Writing is a $29 eBook that you’ll also get for free with the World-Changing Writing Workshop-In-A-Box.
We were going to interview Ali, but all we would have asked her were questions that she answers in The Blogger’s Guide To Effective Writing, so we decided to let the book speak for itself. It’s the best eBook we’ve ever come across for a new, budding, or growing blogger.
Not a blogger? Give it a read anyway. About half the content can improve your writing in general, and about half is blogging-specific.
Bonus #9: Sonia Simone, World-Changing Copywriting
Sonia Simone knows a thing or two about copywriting. She’s the senior editor of Copyblogger, after all. Why do you care? Because, at least by Sonia’s definition, all persuasive writing is copywriting.
In this interview, she talks about the difference between copywriting and other kinds of writing, the art of writing persuasive headlines (which applies to blog post titles, email subject lines, book titles, and lots more), and most importantly, how good copywriting can change the world.
“Insights I got from this workshop have led to major changes in my current world-changing project, and I’m incredibly grateful. I’ll be rereading the transcripts now and again for years. Also loved the bonus materials — some great content — and making both audio and transcripts available was a real plus.”
Carol Thomas, toolsforchangingtheworld.com
Will This Work For You?
We’ve done our best to make this an amazing, fun, and effective workshop. We’ve poured our hearts into this project. But ultimately, the only way for you to know if this workshop will be as awesome as you imagine is for you to try it. So we’re going to make it as painless as possible for you to do just that.
Our Promise To You
If you don’t learn what you hope to learn, you get your money back. Right now, think about what you hope to get out of the workshop. Sign up, try it out, and see if it lives up to your hopes. If so, yay! That’s super! If not, you get your money back with no hassle. No problem either way!
Our #1 goal for this workshop is to help you learn the craft of world-changing writing. If we don’t accomplish our goal, then it would be silly for us to keep your money, now wouldn’t it?
“I got excited about the incredible quality of the presentations. I listened to every session and revved up more each time. I’m going to miss you two a lot.”
Sharon Rose
How To Buy Now
When you buy the World-Changing Writing Workshop-In-A-Box, you get:
- Recordings of all 7 workshop sessions, cleaned up for ease of listening
- Transcripts of all 7 workshop sessions, indexed by section and theme
- The 63-page World-Changing Writing Workbook, including 14 exercises (2 from each speaker)
- Exclusive access to the World Changing Writers Guild forum
- 7 interviews (audio and transcript) on topics that will help you change the world with your writing
- 2 eBooks that will help you improve your writing
This is usually the part where they add a bunch of made-up numbers and tell you how much it “would” cost in some imaginary world, so you can see how cheap it is in comparison. We’re not going to do that, because honestly we have no clue how much these things would cost in that imaginary world. We do know how much the eBooks cost ($56) and we do know how much the speakers charge for one-on-one consultation ($300 on average). So we could do some crazy math and come up with some ridiculously large number like $2156, but that would just be stupid and irrelevant.
What is relevant is that this workshop costs $297.
How much is it worth? That’s up to you.
You’re the only one who can choose how much value you get out of it. And remember, if you try it and decide it’s not worth $297 to you, then you get your money back with no hassle and no guilt.
Oh, and you get all the material the instant you pay for the workshop, so you don’t have to wait!
“I loved it – the recordings and transcripts made it ridiculously easy to feel like I was learning along with everyone else. I feel like this is a solid investment in my writing future, and I want to thank you both for putting together quite possibly the most awesome info product I have used this year.”
Rachael E. C. Acklin, caffeinatedelf.com
We wish you all the best in sharing your gifts with the world and making a difference, however you choose to do so.
With love,
Pace & Kyeli
P.S. This is our life’s work, and we’re doing this because we want to help you. If you’re afraid of signing up for this, that’s totally understandable. It’s a big commitment, both financially and emotionally. As for the financial part, we’re totally cool with giving you a full refund. It’s just us, Pace and Kyeli, so it’s not like we’re going to give you a guilt trip or something. (: As for the emotional part, we suggest you listen to your heart. Do you feel called to this work? We trust your judgment on whether this is right for you.