It went spectacularly well. Three times as many people bought a workshop-in-a-box as signed up for the live version. We helped far more people than we had hoped or expected. We made far more money than we had hoped or expected. We were deluged with sweet and gracious emails and notes that brought tears to our eyes. We were kind of totally blown away, to be honest.

Will you be doing it again next year?

No.

Why not?

We want the live World-Changing Writing Workshop to be the main attraction. This sale burned very brightly, and we don’t want it to steal the spotlight from the Out-Of-The-Box version of the WCWW, which we’re super excited about and going to pour our hearts into. If the live WCWW lost some of its appeal because people wanted to wait until it was smushed up in a box, that would make us sad.

Also, I’ve got something to prove, and I can’t prove it via Pay What You Can. I want to prove that a for-profit business can make the world a better place. I want to prove that a for-profit business can charge fair prices, provide good value, and make people happy. I want to prove that a for-profit business can behave ethically and generously. I want to prove that a for-profit business can put goodness before money. One Pay What You Can sale helps us make this point, but too many and our business model stops looking like the usual for-profit business model where you sell things for a price — and that’s the model that I so desperately want to prove can work for good. (Psst! Profitable Idealism. Stay tuned.)

Was it all sunshine and roses?

No. There was a lot of tech support as well. (; Apparently the huge response overloaded e-junkie’s servers and some people had trouble downloading the large files. I think I was able to help everyone out, though.

Some people felt uncomfortable choosing an amount they felt was both affordable for them and fair to us. It brought up feelings of guilt or shame. We didn’t anticipate this (we made the usual error), and we’re sorry.

We had our own money issues come up, too. We learned a lot about where our money boundaries are.

Kyeli is a genius with a heart of gold.

Kyeli, I am so proud of you. You came up with the idea for this sale on your own, we figured out a way to do it that would benefit others and benefit our business at the same time, and it turned out brilliantly and beautifully. Your generous heart shone through and lit up the lives of hundreds of aspiring world-changing writers. I am grateful for you, and I’m lucky to have you as my business partner.