Yesterday afternoon Pat sent me this.
On 1 October, the last whistle blows and the gates of the Unemployable* community close. People can still get in afterwards, they will just need a ticket, that will cost them money. Pat and I have been thinking and talking about this moment since the start, but now that it is here, we are both a little scared.
Exactly 29 days ago we opened the doors of our little cavern. Real people (!) came in, who were kinder and quicker to help each other than we dared to hope. There is still so much we want to build for them: the foolproof map of everything it takes to start a business, the courses, painless ways for members to find one another and trade an hour of help. Putting a price on something while so much of it is still ahead of us is, yes, scary.
So when Pat asked me whether 9.99 was just fear talking, I honestly did not have an answer.
What I did have, though, was a month of watching other people do scary things in the same room.
Pat, who has played football in front of 65,000 people and is a sales prodigy (yes, I will use that word), confessed to us that introducing himself to a stranger in person terrifies him.
Shane dared to stand on stage in a room full of technologists, close his eyes and recite Seamus Heaney. It was the first time he brought his poetry into his work.
Tomislav, a developer for over ten years and now a company owner, decided to hand his code to someone else.
Katie published a book and went live on a podcast in the same week.
One member pitched a musical to a film director at a festival and got a yes. Then she and a friend ran their first public workshop on Claude Code, for thirteen people.
Ian’s company celebrated their first same-sex proposal with The Yes Ring®, their new way to propose without the pressure of choosing the engagement ring.
James finished his first novella and asked strangers to read it and tell him honestly what they thought. Shane launched his website, after ten years of fighting WordPress.
You just got a first glimpse of our founding members, complete strangers to one another, who decided to share something private with everyone else in the room. And every time, someone answered. Tomislav got advice on how to let go and trust the new person. Someone offered to find a composer for the musical. James found his beta readers. Pat got a better opening line: ask people what they are excited about right now. Three strangers turned up on Shane's post with their own WordPress horror stories.
And when Pat invited everyone to answer how kind they are, Jamie told us about a client who asked him to remove two fruit trees her late father had planted. He took sections of the trees and, as a surprise, made her a box from the wood, by hand, over eight months. She cried when he gave it to her.
Starting on your own is mostly a list of first times, and they are the scariest ones, because you have no reference point. The first client, the first price, the first time you tell people what you actually do, and not what you cosplay in someone else’s company. So even if someone had to do their first times alone, afterwards they had a bunch of people to share them with. And that is the whole idea of Unemployable*: a place where you can say the scary thing out loud, and someone will answer. Always. When you have people with you, what is there left to be afraid of?
So, Pat, is it just because we are scared? A little, probably. We chose 9.99 because we want joining to be an easy yes while there is still a lot to build. But that is only for now. It is going to get very good, very quickly.
From Monday we run live workshops every week: the two of us and anyone who wants to bring a business or an idea and talk it through. The first session is about why you want to be unemployable in the first place, and whether you have what it takes.
Do you?
Until the gates close on 1 October, you can join the coolest crowd of unemployables around, for free, for life.
Fausta & Pat
I should probably do a blog post on that box. Great to be on board!