A Letter For Shaggy, Cubby & Robby

My unexpected workshop and support group

Last April I attended an event to celebrate the 175th episode of one of my favorite Podcasts - The All-In Podcast - and the result of which was completely unexpected.

I thought I’d go to meet some like minded people (other All-In fans) and get some feedback from the platform used to host it, called River, which I’ve been advising and helping with since Oct 2023.

Shameless plug for River: It’s an events platform that lets people organize around their favorite creators, or ideas, or whatever it is you LIKE. It’s built from a different POV - where the head of the community leads the way but then the platform enables the community to build itself, from sourcing hosts and locations to promotion and discovery of new events. Go try it, it’s awesome.

The host of the event was my friend Shaggy Eels and we had just met a few weeks prior to this event. Shaggy had met my wife Bri at a co-working space (shoutout to Maven) that they both belong to and we hit it off at another River event for My First Million fans shortly thereafter.

Shaggy is one of those people that just brings light into the world. He’s always positive and glowing with good vibes and one of his best skills is just bringing people together a facilitating community and conversation. Keep doing your thing Shaggy, you’re ability to connect people is invaluable.

When I showed up to the event there were just a few people there, Robby and Cubby, so we decided to pivot and just go get tacos at a little taco stand down the street (shoutout Tacos Don Rafa). It was just 4 dudes, doing dude stuff. Eating tacos and getting to know one another.

We started the night by talking about the subject we were there to originally discuss, the All-In pod, but we quickly digressed. The topics turned to a bit of a round table, each person got to ask a question or bring up a topic and then each person would respond to that topic.

Someone introduced the question “What are you passionate about right now?”.

When it got to me I knew what I wanted to say:

“I’m working on this Letter writing project”

But I couldn’t muster the courage to say it, I was embarrassed or shy or I don’t know. So I punted and said something else.

It gnawed at me for another 15 minutes that I didn’t say what I WANTED TO SAY. We kept going with the conversation exercise until it got back to me to choose the topic/question for everyone else.

I took a deep breath, maybe 2 deep breaths, and then found the courage to talk about it.

“Guys - I lied. The thing I’m most interested in is this project I’m working on.”

If you haven’t read my [Process] section of A Letter For - that’s basically what I did next. I walked them through the whole thing and they very patiently listened and engaged with me through that whole story.

Then they got curious, dug in a little deeper, and really helped me workshop and explore all the different possibilities of what the project could be. It was such a selfless act on their part (and felt selfish to me). Their input really helped me thinking broader about what I was doing and they left me feeling confident that I was on the right path.

They all basically said “Well let us know when you are launching it, can’t wait to read it.”

Well - here you are gents. This one is to you.

Thanks for the support and feedback and all you did to help me get this started. It mattered.

Tacos on me next time - hoping we can do that before the holidays!

With love and deep appreciation,

-Andrew