Hello, Friends.
Here’s an email I sent to Deanna a couple weeks ago. I literally copied and pasted this here, added a picture of President Not Sure, and bolded a few lines here and there. I’m pretty stoked.
PSA: This piece is raw and contains what some may consider excessive use of swear words. To those offended by such language, I am sorry. Much of what went wrong with this thing over time was trying to be what others expected. I need GBXM back in my life, and—for now, anyway—it’s going to be pretty salty. I appreciate your support as I get this thing back on the road without a clutch or MAF. Thank you.
Believe it or not, I think I’ve got the reboot figured out.
I know. You’re totally O_o “Say whaaaaa?” right now. Check this shit out.
All the old posts, save one, are back to draft status. RSS-driven email is turned off, too. [Note: Just turned back on 10/02/17.]
I’m going to get my podcasting shit figured out, have real, actual conversations with people, publish a podcast, then recap—and ideally expand—in writing.
Each week, I’ll go back into the crates and find a couple stories to polish and publish, too. I know there will be plenty I simply trash. (They either broke The Rule or are beyond salvageable.)
I’ve also decided I’m going to take a hard line on things. This is the new cruelty. The only rule. (Meet our new subscriber signup page.)
That—and the manifesto on the home page—set the tone for the future of GBXM.
You ask me about running ads. Do we believe in the brands we’re advertising? If we do, we advertise the shit out of them.
What about new model reviews? Is it a new model that matters to us, personally? If so, we go all out. “Check out this amazing Kia Optima. 565 miles on a tank and/or available with a Mitsubishi 4B11T turbo under the hood. Are you shitting me?”
(Had a rental Optima for the Buschur Racing Shootout back in August. Drove from Pittsburgh to an hour west of Cleveland—and back—on a single tank. Totes impressed.)
How many posts will we publish per week? As many as we’re on-fire about producing that week, I say. If nothing speaks to us, nothing runs.
Fuck all that self-imposed stress. We’re making GBXM fun again. We’re writing for US.
I want GBXM to be so on-fire, so blazing with intrinsic value and passion, that any gearhead with a pulse will be all over anything we publish.
And if they aren’t—they aren’t our target demo and I don’t fucking care anymore.
We’ll sell ads. We’ll sell merch. (Wait until you hear about the serialized decals and totems.) We’ll sell events. We’ll sell the spare tire on the back of Fezzik.
But only if we truly believe in what we’re selling.
In other words, we’re either INSPIRED or we don’t bother. We’ve got too much other shit going on in our lives to throw another monkey on our backs, ya know?
The new GBXM is going to be all about attitude. You can’t please everyone all the time, so let’s just please those who get it.
Hallelujah. Holy shit. Where’s the aspirin? LOL.
You know what? I think I’m going to publish this email on GBXM. Because it’s inspired.
And that’s how we roll.
What do you think? :)
