From: Calvin from Simplero <calvin@simplero.com>
Subject: News from Simplero: Lists can now give access to spaces

Yo, Lovely Simplerista

Taking breaks. We all know it's good for us. Sometimes it can be so hard to do.

Last week, I took most of the week "off". Not completely off, but just as in allowing myself not to do anything other than the absolute necessary to keep things humming along, which mainly means answering the questions from y'all. And, interestingly enough, last week also broke the record for the most new paying customers signing up in a week. Coincidence? Maybe :)

My Friday was exceptionally great. Had a really hard and good workout, had a healing, and an amazing romantic dinner with my love. It was so great, in fact, that I was sick for the following three days! Not that that stopped me from getting a little coding done :)

I have a feature that's been in the back of my mind for a very long time, which would let you create custom, templated websites on Simplero. These could be used for your main website, for membership sites, for mini marketing sites ... anything you need a site for. It's still quite some ways off from being production-ready, but I tinker with it from time to time. This weekend was such a time, and I made great progress. I want to make a new personal website for myself, and I want to build it on Simplero, of course.

Phoebe and I wanted to take a trip out to The Hamptons on Sunday, but because I was sick, we pushed it out a few days to Tuesday and Wednesday. I wrote most of this newsletter from The Maidstone in East Hampton. Despite having lived in New York on and off since 1999, I've never been out here before. We drove all the way out to the very tip of Long Island, Montauk Point. We went sightseeing, found where the rich people live (you can tell because their houses are all the way on the waterfront and can't been seen from the road), and had a great time. Also managed to spot Calvin Klein's $105M property. Do you think he'll let me use it, since we have the same name?

And while all this was going on, a couple of big-name people in the industry reached out to me, I got a couple of features done that have been on my list for a long time, and Phoebe and I had some very profound and deep conversations and insights and connected deeper than ever.

I think I could get used to this taking breaks thing.

The thing is, I love my work and my life so much, it seems like easing the foot from the metaphorical gas pedal just a tiny bit creates the space where creativity and passion can start flowing freely again, and then things end up moving a lot faster, and the process becomes much more fun. That's been the experience.

It's a fun energy to play with. I have created for myself a life where there's very little i "have" to do. I'm not always good at taking advantage of that, but it feels so good when I do.

New Features in Simplero: Tickets, Spaces for Lists, and More

A couple of big announcements this week.

Numero uno: Simplero's built-in ticketing system is now available for all accounts on the Basic plan and up. That means your customers can submit tickets to you, and you can respond to them and help them out, using the same tools I use to support you. All integrated into the platform. You can see the contact sheet for that person, recent purchases, your internal notes about them, recent tickets they've submitted, which page they were on when they submitted the ticket, and of course, you can respond to them and have the dialog with them right there. 

It's a pretty sweet system, I'm very happy with it myself, having used it and iterated on it for about a year and a half at this point. And now I'm opening it up for use for you, if you're on the "Basic", "Professional", or "Unlimited" plan.

Numero dos: You can now give access to spaces from your lists. Yes. It's true! Go to any list, click Configure, and click to add a space.

Then whenever someone subscribes to your list, they'll be issued a Simplero ID (if they don't have one already), and they'll have access to the space. If they opt-out from the list, they'll no longer have access to the space.

So if want to offer a more involved freebie - say a six-week mini-course - you can now do that in a space. 

Or you can use it to give access to the first module for free, while making the following modules require that people purchase your product.

You can even "drip" the content out over time using auto-responses, just like you've been able to do with products for a long time. 

Numero tre: Add multiple notes for a customer, with dates. You can use this to keep track of what you talked about in each session, to record every contact with a customer, and much more.

And then a bunch of fixes: 

  • Videos and audios in space forum/blog posts will now be linked from the email notifications
  • Show errors during contact import with more details, and in the browser - this also lets you keep track of progress
  • Better ability to infer the correct country and region from fuzzy data
  • Importing notes for your contacts
  • Fixed a problem with getting access to space when people hadn't entered the names of all participants

Enjoy!

Random Links from around the Interwebs

I love this run-down of 16 phones that were deemed to be "iPhone killers", 2008-2011. Last I checked, the iPhone is still around. The more I learn about the world, the more I stop reading stuff. So much of what gets written, especially journalism, is just so dumb and uninformed, it's incredible.

Apparently Apple is in on the Rickroll phenomenon.

Online security is one such area where what gets written is ridiculously misinformed. Thankfully this "open letter to banks" by the makers of 1Password (which I use and love and strongly recommend) sets the record straight. Having a password manager and making it easy to copy-paste from that password manager is the only chance us normal people have of staying reasonably secure in the online world. Same with those forms that refuse to let you copy-paste credit card numbers into them. The only reasonable way to use credit cards online is to store them in a place like 1Password and allow it to input it for you when needed. Much better than pulling it out and actually typing it each time. Who wants to do that?

Anyhooo ... got up on my soapbox a little there at the end. :)

Have a most amazing week. I'll be 41 tomorrow. Looking back, the year of being 40 has been the most incredible year of my life. I wouldn't exchange it for anything. Everything has just gotten better and better. I can't wait to see what 41 has in store for me.

Lots of love to you!

-Calvin