“Members have told me, ‘I'm getting rid of my social media and spending more time here. The quality of engagement, the supportive mood — it’s far and away a better place to spend my time.’”

Rick Lewis

Founder

Before he started Write Hearted, Rick Lewis heard the online writing community he had been a member of for years was shutting down. He was heartbroken.

“My first thought was, ‘Where am I going to find my community?'” he recalls. “Then my second thought was, ‘Maybe I should create one.’ But my third thought was, ‘No, I couldn't do that. I write, but I'm not a writer.”

When the idea of launching a new group wouldn’t stop nagging him, Rick realized his fear was exactly the reason why he should say yes. There were so many other people with stories to share and the same reservations who needed encouragement. After researching different online platforms, he came across Mighty Networks and took the plunge — but not without a shock.

“I spent a couple of months fighting off panic attacks,” he says. “I was working so hard to keep myself together and not call everyone and say, ‘Hey, I can't do this.’”

A public speaker and author of several books (even one about meditation), Rick was just as surprised by his physical reaction. But leading a network like the one he envisioned was a new kind of responsibility. Would it live up to members' expectations? Would he be able to sustain the support he was promising? He pushed through his full-body freakout and now he’s learning to surf the anxiety and keep moving forward to reach new levels of growth, for himself and his community. After dozens of conversations with people he thought might be interested in joining, 30 people signed up as paying members for his first cohort; a caring community coalesced.

“I'm old enough to remember manual typewriters and Smith Corona word processors,” Rick says. “It's quite a thing to now be using technology like this.”

When Rick heard Mighty Networks founder Gina Bianchini explain how to find the transition point for potential members, he knew exactly how he wanted to design his community. He created four tracks within Write Hearted: essays, challenges, comments, and stories. Each month, depending on their bandwidth and the kind of support members want to receive or give, they opt in to the area that makes the most sense for their writing journey. Each track is engineered to conquer an obstacle whether it be writer’s block, hesitation, insignificance, or isolation. His members’ best year ever sits just on the other side of those stumbling blocks, a time when they publish more consistently and courageously than ever before.

“In the People Magic course, Gina's advice to identify a shared transition that your ideal members are trying to make is what made all the difference for me,” says Rick. “It guided the creation of the 4 tracks and attracted an incredibly resonant group who want to do this work together."

Another surprise for Rick: it didn’t take long for people magic to spark. In just a few months, he now has members all over the world, from Bali to Sweden, who pay for a $2,000 yearly membership to write together.

“As a writer, when I see the word magic being used, I'm typically like, ‘Come on,’” he says. “But damn, the word applies in this case. You're watching people spark one another and benefit each other in a way that one person could never accomplish alone.. It’s just the best feeling.”

In building his network, Rick has found himself on the other side of his own transition point, too. While Writehearted has shown him leading a community is indeed not for the faint of heart, he can now confidently say he is a host — a word Gina said during a Mighty Networks workshop that moved him.

“Those words had an emotional impact on me,” he says. “I am, in good measure, a different person after the last five months in deciding to do this. For the first time in my life, I can say something I’ve wanted all my life: I am a host. I'm a host in a way that's working for the people at my party, right hearted individuals who want express themselves more consistently in the world. That's an incredible feeling.”