Yesterday this group had 483 members. Today it has 474*. Over the past 24 hours, I've removed 10 people from this group, following up on this discussion on written rules. As proof, I am attaching 10 "churned" profiles of former House members, with yesterday's churn date. I'm not holding up these removed ex-members to shame them. I have nothing against them personally. But rules are rules, and Daily Email House has its rules. As a few people commented in the discussion I linked to above: Enforcement is key. No sense in having rules if you're not going to enforce them. I'd also add, not only is enforcement key... but public enforcement is key. Yeah, maybe somehow you project a different vibe if you have rules and you stick to them in private, behind the curtain, where only you and the person you're dealing with are privy to what went down. But it helps the objective of the rules massively if you make a public showing of enforcing rules. That way, the rules don't just punish the transgressors, but are a reminder and an encouragement and even a reward for everyone else who did not transgress. This doesn't apply to just kicking people out of communities for not engaging: - It's the same thing with deadlines for your promos to your email list - It's the same when dealing with disrespectful readers or clients or partners - It's the same for turning someone away from your offers, because he or she is not going to get value out of those offers, and you've set a policy for yourself to not sell to people like that In each case, enforcement is key... and public enforcement is the Golden Key. (*) Daily Email House yesterday had 483 members... minus the 10 members I removed makes 473... and yet the group now has 474 members? A few days ago, I finally filled out the necessary fields to make this group discoverable via the Skool discovery network. Today a dude found Daily Email House via Skool, and asked to join.

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.

My theory why it's easier to make friends when you're young: Because you do exciting stuff together. You play sports together... You go to the beach together or go for a concert together... You sit in class together (not so exciting) and study for the same exams (kind of exciting, if you're a nerd) and hate the same teachers (very exciting). When you grow up, interactions with others become reduced to: Sitting together at the same coffee shop... Talking... Nodding and smiling at each other. It's hard to really form a bond over coffee and some nodding. It takes cooperation, activity, a shared goal with an emotional outcome, even if it's trivial, to bind us to other people. And as for in-life, so for on-line. Which gets me to my question for you... How can we as a group here, inside Daily Email House, do stuff TOGETHER? What would that even look like? Something that isn't just sitting in the same coffee shop (or Skool group)... "talking" (eg. posting or commenting in here)... "nodding and smiling" (liking posts or comments)? Something that involves cooperation, actual activity, a shared goal? I don't know. I hope you have ideas, and that you will share them. I'll consider them all earnestly. And if you've been in this group for any length of time, you know that if you toss up an idea, there's a good chance it will become reality. Thanks in advance.

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?

Can I get your help? I'm wondering how we could create the equivalent atmosphere of an under-15 tennis camp here inside Daily Email House. The background: A couple days ago, I was watching an interview with a pro tennis player, Francis Tiafoe. Tiafoe is part of a generation of top American tennis players who all came up together. And by that I mean... They lived together in the same dorms, sleeping in bunk beds one above the other... ... they trained together on same courts for hours each day, day after day... ... they competed against each other since they were 12. And today they are all in the top 10 top 20 in the world. It's kind of like if, inside this Daily Email House group, 5-10 House members today end up being among the top 10 or top 20 biggest and richest online influencers in the world in 10 years from now, on the scale of Tim Ferris or Gary Vee. Speaking about what made this possible, Tiafoe said: === They did a good job always putting us in camps [to train together and to compete against each other]. I'm seeing these guys two weeks out of every month, from 13 on. I'm looking around, trying to be the best out of this group, not really thinking about big picture, turning pro, or anything like that. But this group right here? I GOTTA be the guy. === The guy interviewing Tiafoe, a former world #1 named Andy Roddick, called this "healthy jealousy." On the one hand, maybe you don't like the sound of jealousy, whether healthy or not. At the same time, consider what Tiafoe also said. First off, he said that he and all the other guys who came up together are all still friends today, 15+ years after being thrown in these "healthy jealousy" tennis camps to train and compete together. He also put a positive spin on the competition and jealousy part of it: === Everybody just kept going. We always had that mentality, "Well if this guy did it, I can definitely do it." We just kept believing off each other. === That sound pretty nice actually.