Tag: Blog

In Search of Soho People

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Round 4, Day 11

Malcolm Gladwell opens The Tipping Point with the story of Hush Puppies. A dying shoe brand — almost pulled from production — that exploded into a national trend because a handful of kids in Soho started wearing them. The company didn’t cause it. They nearly killed the brand. The tipping point happened because the right people found the product in the right place at the right time, and it spread from there.

I need to find my Soho people.

I have a five-star review on Amazon from a guy I went to high school with. We haven’t spoken in almost thirty years. He found my book off a single Facebook post, read it, and left a review comparing it to Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan. He said he put everything else down to read it. He wants the sequel.

One Facebook post. One reader. Thirty years of silence, and the book broke through it.

He’s not the only one out there. I know that. The problem has never been the product. Every person who’s read Phase Defiant has told me they couldn’t put it down. The problem is that almost nobody knows it exists.

I have a how-the-heck-do-I-get-this-in-front-of-people problem.

Gladwell’s point isn’t that Hush Puppies were great shoes. It’s that tipping points have structure. They don’t happen by accident — they happen because conditions are right. The right people, wearing the right thing, in the right neighborhood, at the right time.

I’m a storyteller who wrote a book. I don’t know where my ideal readers gather. I just know the book is good, and the few people who’ve found it agree.

So this week, I’m not trying to sell to everyone. I’m looking for my Soho — the small group of readers who will grab this book and not be able to shut up about it. I don’t need a million of them. I need a few in the right place.

I’ve spent five months building things I believe in. Now I have to learn how things spread.

Never Ring the Bell

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Round 4, Day 10

I’m reading Admiral McRaven’s Make Your Bed this week. In Navy SEAL training, there’s a brass bell. If you want to quit, you ring it. You’re done. No more cold water, no more impossible runs, no more being pushed past what you thought you could take.

McRaven’s message: if you want to change the world, never ring the bell.

My bell doesn’t look like that.

There’s no brass bell in my living room. Nobody’s watching to see if I ring it. There’s no ceremony to my quitting — no moment where everyone knows I stopped.

My bell is when I stop doing the habits.

It’s the morning I skip Bible study because I’m running late. It’s the day I don’t track my calories because I already know I went over. It’s the walk I don’t take, the book I don’t open, the blog post I decide can wait until tomorrow. One day becomes two. Two becomes a week. And by the time I notice, the structure I built is already eroding and I barely heard it happen.

That’s what makes the ordinary bell harder than McRaven’s. His bell is loud. Mine is silent. His is a single dramatic decision. Mine is a hundred tiny ones, each one so small it doesn’t feel like quitting. It just feels like a day off.

I’ve rung my bell before. Not this year — but I know exactly what it sounds like. In 2022, I lost significant weight, stopped doing what got me there, and the habits dissolved so quietly I didn’t realize they were gone until the weight was back.

That’s why I built the 7-40 Challenge the way I did. Not as a goal with an endpoint, but as a rhythm that doesn’t stop. The habits are the structure. The structure is what keeps the bell out of reach. As long as I’m doing the seven things — even imperfectly, even six out of seven on a rough day — I haven’t rung it.

Day 5 of this round, I hit the wall. Six out of seven habits. No creative work. In bed early. That was a bad day. It wasn’t the bell. The bell would have been Day 6 looking the same. And Day 7. And Day 8. Until I stopped counting altogether.

Day 6, I came back. That’s the difference.

McRaven’s bell is dramatic. Mine is ordinary. But the commitment is the same — you decide, every single day, that you’re not done yet.

Headfirst

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Round 4, Day 9

I started reading Admiral McRaven’s Make Your Bed today while mowing the yard. Chapter 6 is called “Dare Greatly.” It’s about the slide for life in SEAL training — the obstacle where going headfirst is faster but terrifying, and most people go feet first because it feels safer.

I know exactly what my version of feet first looks like. Keep creating. Keep writing blog posts. Keep building things in private. Keep doing the comfortable parts of this challenge and never venture into the hard part — which is telling people about what I’ve built and asking them to care.

The thing I’m most afraid of is making a marketing plan and sticking to it. Not because I don’t know how to talk to people. Not because the work isn’t good. Because somewhere deep down, I don’t want to look like I’m asking for help. I don’t want people to think I’ve got my hand out. Promotion feels like begging, and I’ve had a chip on my shoulder my whole adult life about wanting to be taken seriously.

That’s not irrational. It’s pride. And it’s been in the way for a long time.

I asked myself two questions this week.

What’s the worst thing that happens if I go headfirst and it doesn’t work? I still have my day job. I still have my family and my home. The worst case is a little egg on my face and a recovery. That doesn’t sound all that bad.

What’s the worst thing that happens if I stay safe? Then I’m an impostor. I built all of this — two novels, 144 days of habits, a business plan, a framework that works — and I never let anyone see it. That’s worse than rejection. That’s hiding.

And I’m done hiding.

The funny thing is, I’ve gone headfirst before. I went headfirst into my relationship with my wife because I knew exactly what I wanted and I didn’t care what anyone else thought. I went headfirst into my master’s degree. I went headfirst into every career move that mattered.

The creative work and the business — I turned those into some magical unicorn that required a level of courage I supposedly didn’t have. But they’re not magic. People do this every day. And here I am, stuck having a hard time getting over myself.

Thirty-three days left in Round 4. Time to go headfirst.

No Guilt in the Ice Cream

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Round 4, Day 6

Yesterday was rough. I hit the wall. Six out of seven habits, no creative work, no Substack, in bed early. It happens.

But two days like that don’t get to happen in a row.

This weekend is Memorial Day. My goal is to enjoy myself. Eat some good barbecue. Have a bowl of homemade ice cream — maybe two. Spend time with my family that is so incredibly precious that no calorie count is worth missing it.

I’m not giving myself a blank check. I’m not doubling my calorie goal. I’m saying there’s no guilt in the ice cream. There’s no guilt in choosing to be present with the people I love over tracking every number for three days.

Bible study continues. Gratitude continues. Walking continues. The floor doesn’t move. But the ceiling gets a little breathing room for a weekend, and when Tuesday comes, everything tightens back down.

Happy Memorial Day. The 7-40 Challenge goes on.

The Good Hydra

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Round 4, Day 2

I just finished Josh Kaufman’s How to Fight a Hydra. It’s a short fable about facing an ambitious, terrifying challenge — the kind where you cut off one head and two more grow in its place. The hero enters the arena not knowing if he’ll survive, gets staggered, recovers, and keeps swinging.

I recognized the arena. I’ve been in it for 138 days.

But here’s where my story breaks from Kaufman’s metaphor. His hydra is made of problems. Fear, uncertainty, risk — heads that are trying to kill you.

My hydra is made of good things.

Two novels. A daily blog. A Bible illustration project. Music. A nonfiction book outline. A teaching series. A certification to study for. A distribution strategy to build. A platform to grow. Every single one of them is something I care about. Every single one of them deserves my time.

And every time I finish something, two more ideas grow in its place.

That’s the version of the hydra nobody warns you about — the one where you can’t cut a head because none of them are the enemy. The problem isn’t that the work is hard. The problem is that there’s more good work than there are hours, and it feels wrong to set any of it down.

But the hero in Kaufman’s fable doesn’t fight all the heads at once. He’d die. He picks one, fights it, recovers, picks the next.

That’s not elimination. It’s sequencing. And sequencing requires a harder kind of discipline than grinding — it requires you to look at something you care about and say, “not yet.”

For Round 4, I’ve locked two heads. Get ready to sit my CDMP exam at the end of June. Get Phase Defiant in front of more people. Everything else — the other novels, the teaching series, the nonfiction — stays alive, but it waits.

The hydra isn’t going anywhere. Neither am I. But I can only swing at one or two heads at a time and expect to survive.