In a thread from last week, @Neil Sutton wrote: === I’ve been in some accountability groups that were very successful. It’s not an “all of us” getting together kinda thing, but those created an opportunity to bond with and become friends with people I might never had met otherwise. The best one was when I was in Brian Kurtz’s Titans group. He assigned the groups of 3 or 4 then we went off on our own and met monthly. We came up with 3 questions we took turns answering in each call and the others would offer feedback and support if needed. It was definitely optional. You put your name in to be assigned to a group if interested. Then you'd be grouped with a few others. I had to look back, and there were just four groups of 3 each. (I was teamed up with the amazing Kira Hug & Shannon McCaffrey.) === Are you interested in this? More importantly, will you actually participate? I'm happy to put the pods together. But ultimately, this is about you, and having a regular little mini-mastermind with two or three other folks in this group, and helping each other out, and socializing, and keeping each other on track. It won't work unless you participate, and regularly. So do you want this? Let me know below.

This Thursday at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST, I'll get on Zoom for a bit of Daily Email Open House: To hang out, maybe have a beer, and answer questions about sending daily emails... making a $1k+ offer... and using your list to pay for a house. If you'd like to join me, here's where to sign up: Daily Email Open House

UPDATE FOLLOWING VITRIOL WEDNESDAY: Thanks to everyone who participated. For 24 hours, we roasted, very mildly, the winner. As promised, the Vitriol Wednesday post and all the comments have been deleted to protect the vitriolic. Frankly, it's not an experiment I plan to repeat... but it was worth doing one time. ***** In another thread about joint group projects, @Robin Timmers suggests: "Let’s all verbally attack the same guru." Let it never be said I don't take member suggestions seriously or that I don't implement them quickly. So at the risk of completely going against the vibe of this community, and of poisoning the well of promising future relationships forever... I designate next Wednesday "Vitriol Wednesday," where we can all pile on and say nasty things about some guru who really rubs us the wrong way. But who is that? Who should we pick? Who do you ☠️LOVE🐀? Cast your vote below, and as always, it will influence reality

Yesterday I wrote a post about unwritten rules that strengthen groups. That post got... 10 likes and 5 people to comment, in a group of 483 members. Maybe it was a particularly bad or irrelevant post. In any case it seems like a good time to talk about written rules. I recently joined a Facebook group. The group is about the same size as Daily Email House, but it's much more engaged. People are enthusiastically introducing themselves in the group as soon as they join (as did I)... ... spontaneously writing up new posts and starting new discussions all the time... ... commenting on others' posts all the time. How? Simple. The group has written rules stating that you have to introduce yourself when you join, and participate once you're inside, or you will get kicked out. And the moderators follow through on these rules. What do you think about that? Please comment below. Or don't. But I've decided to start doing the same: Periodically and randomly and brutally removing people who don't participate inside Daily Email House. Your choice.

This morning I watched a video about unwritten rules in baseball. (Bear with me if you know nothing about baseball or care nothing for baseball.) I had no idea, but baseball has had, for 100+ years, dozens of unwritten rules about player conduct, for example: - You cannot flip your bat after you hit a home run - You cannot have a beard (all teams, once upon a time, New York Yankees still today) - You cannot score from second base on a single if your team if the game is a blowout and your team is winning Now here's what got me: These unwritten rules are enforced BY THE PLAYERS THEMSELVES ON THE PLAYERS THEMSELVES... often by members of your own team! If you break one of these unwritten rules, odds are great that you will be beaten up, ostracized, or sometimes worse (eg. have a 100mph baseball launched at your face on purpose). Here's what else got me: - If you're a big star and you break a rule in a big moment, exceptions are made - If you're young or inexperienced, then you will be consistently and brutally punished by other players for breaking a rule I remember reading in, I believe, Robert Cialdini's Influence about the importance of hazing rituals to form a sense of in-group identity. That's what this reminds me of. Seemingly arbitrary rules, enforced by group members, as a way of reinforcing the importance of the group and of recommitting their loyalty to that group. Now I've really never belonged to any group, unless that group is the group of outsiders who don't really belong to any groups. But without getting too weird about it... I'm curious: What seemingly arbitrary rules have you experienced or seen in real-life groups you've been a part of? And in online groups you've been a part of?