How to run a modern social club

A three-year business plan to inspire more thinkers and grow membership.

This is The Ledger, a monthly newsletter exclusively for my subscribers at the Collector tier and investors in my book project We Should Own The Economy (at the $200 level and above). Here I share the process of building a media ecosystem and writing a book in public. It includes open access to my goals and financials and how I’m performing relative to those goals and financials. Members can provide feedback on my strategy and influence where we go from here.

This month, I’m sharing my three-year plan to grow the Elysian Collective

My business model is based on Enlightenment-era social clubs, where utopian thinkers once gathered to come up with ideas like democracy, abolishing slavery, and women’s right to vote. Like those old clubs, I started with a newsletter, and this year, began expanding into print pamphlets, books, gatherings, guest lectures, and action leagues that will take our ideas and put them into action.

The thesis of my project is to create a place where we can write to think, collaboratively. Alongside a community of writers, we collaborate on a writing prompt, think through some of the most important ideas of our time through an essay collection and print pamphlet, then mutually benefit from publishing that project together. At the same time, we benefit the world at large by creating a media ecosystem that doesn’t dwell on the problems but actively thinks through the solutions. So far this year, we’ve published two collaborative print pamphlets and crowdfunded a book in that vein.

Now I’m investing all of the money I’ve earned back into the collective to reach more subscribers, grow our paid membership, and secure sponsorships and grants that can fund even more collaborative media projects from here. To benchmark our growth in that direction, here are my three-year goals: