That's the hard truth behind most "why isn't my shop selling" panic. It's almost never the product — Etsy just can't find your listing to show it to anyone. I just dropped a new video breaking down the fix: how buyers actually search, the exact title formula that gets you found, and how to use all 13 tags without turning your listing into keyword soup. I even rewrite a weak title live so you can see the before and after. Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/FZS5NVOaRHs

People have been arguing about this since 1513 and I genuinely don't know where I land yet. Machiavelli says a ruler should be feared rather than loved, that appearing virtuous matters more than being virtuous, and that results excuse the methods. Which reads as monstrous. But he also claimed he was just describing how power actually operates rather than how we pretend it does. So: is naming the ugly truth the same as endorsing it? That's September's book in The Canon Club. Less than 100 pages, one month, and I suspect a lot of disagreement in the comments. What's your instinct before we start?

I'll go first: Meditations. Quoted it for years. Hadn't read a page. I think most of us have one — not because we're lazy, but because reading a classic alone is genuinely hard. No deadline, no context, language older than your house. You get twenty pages in, feel a bit stupid, and put it back. So I started a book club for exactly that problem. One classic a month, read together, with a guide that gives you the context first. Currently on Meditations. Free to join. But mostly I'm curious about your answer. What's the book you've been faking?

Most people don't avoid the classics because they're boring. They avoid them because they tried once, alone, and it went badly. Here's what actually works — I've been running a classics book club for a few weeks now and this is the advice I keep repeating. 1️⃣ Pick short over famous. Everyone starts with War and Peace and quits. Start with something you can finish in two weeks. Meditations is 130 pages with no plot to follow. The Art of War has chapters you can read in a minute. A 130-page win beats a 700-page guilt trip, and momentum matters more than prestige. 2️⃣ Get a modern translation. This is the one nobody tells you and it matters enormously. The free version you'll find online is almost always a Victorian translation from the 1800s that reads like a legal document. People read it, feel stupid, and conclude they hate the book. They don't hate the book — they hate a 160-year-old translation. Spend the $10. 3️⃣ Read the context first, not the footnotes. Five minutes on who wrote this, when, and why will do more than an hour of annotations. Knowing that Meditations was a private journal the emperor never meant anyone to read changes every single page of it. Don't decode every line. Skim the parts that don't land. Great writers repeat their important ideas five different ways — you'll catch the next version. You're not being tested. 4️⃣ Read it with someone. This is the real one. A deadline and a few other people is the difference between a book you finished and a book on your shelf. It's why book clubs have existed for two hundred years. That last one is why I started The Canon Club — one classic a month, read together, with a guide up front so the old language stops being the barrier. It's free to join and we're mid-way through Meditations right now. But honestly, even if you never join anything: pick a short one, get a good translation, and find one person to read it with. That's the whole method.

For a really long time now (I'm actually not sure how long) the price of becoming a Premium member has been a measly $3/month - less than a carton of milk, less than a cup of coffee, less than a pack of gum... But the times they are a-changing, inflation is taking its toll, and it has come time for the price to go up. 😊 Note that the price you lock in now is for life! In all honesty, though, the real reason for the price increase is Growth Boost. This top 1% community gets almost no ad time as far as I can tell, and they only reason I can think of is that the price is too cheap for Skool to make its ad spend back. What that means is that tons of Skoolers who could be benefiting from this community simply don't know about it. I have said again and again that I don't think it's wise to make business decisions based on Growth Boost, but I also just think increasing the price is a wise business decision as well. It is time. There are so many benefits to becoming a Premium member, that I really hope more of you take advantage of it. For all the details, check out this post. So, what will the new price be? Are you ready for it? You might want to sit down. As of September 1, the cost of becoming a Premium member will be $5/month. 😱 So, if you've been sitting on this and hemming and hawing, now is the time! Oh and tell your friends. Friends don't let friends Skool alone! 😉