Terms

"JoClub is a reference to the Journaling Club, but also is logical due to my own name." Jo Franco begins. "When I started writing, I knew I had these huge feelings. I also had siblings older than me who did not want to know about my feelings. Thus, I started writing."

"I was born with no passport and was living in the darkness, hiding from authorities, and conversing in Portuguese while trying to learn English while navigating the maze," she says. "I discovered a lot of different languages as I was obsessed with being accepted. However, I felt disregarded since I was an out of the ordinary kid. My appearance was distinct from the others in my vicinity. I was the smallest kid therefore I had this quiet voice, as well as a calm persona.

"Of course, it's simple for me to look of what was but, at the time I was in a state anxiety of 'Why have I been confused and feel I'm being ignored?  And we every one of us goes through this."

The good news is that Jo was able to journal: "I had a more empathetic relationship with myself of being observant and not making judgments. I wrote about all the negative stuff, but I know good things occurred throughout my life. I started to change my writing, not just what I wrote but also, oddly enough changing the way I see things because I was looking for positive aspects. It was necessary to see positive things to come up with positive things to write about. I became a more positive person. I was able to be more positive."

Understanding the context

When she was a student at the University of Manhattan, Jo was overwhelmed by the volume of voices she competed with. She was also able to locate much-needed room in her journal. "It didn't matter if I resided located within the States or went on a vacation I always had this tool that allowed me to come home.

"My "why" can give people the same sense of "You're capable of this no matter how ugly your circumstances may appear. Furthermore, it allows you to help yourself emotionally, but it's equally enjoyable to write down your experiences - since by documenting it you can make a little gesture of gratitude that was the first step to take. Your life will remain in own space and inside your thinking."

"There's research-based evidence that supports the assertion" she claims. "There are clinical trials of recording gratitude as a form for medical treatment. People who write down their gratitude and gratitude will feel more content."

"Give your mind some relief. Take the weight out of your mind and write it on paper. When you write about negative things, it gives the reader a space that permits you to think about it and respond with emotion. Our emotions can cause us to go insane. They're the source of everything. They're the source of confidence as well as the foundation of charisma as well as at the core of a person's being and attracting positivity."

"Maybe this could be a membership"

Jo certainly had plenty of goodness by 2020. Thanks to her YouTube channel which has more than a million users, she was paid to travel. "I was living a very private life but simultaneously, I was writing. It was what I really wanted to do: what was really me was journaling."

In the beginning of January, 2020, she was given the Netflix post as anchor on The World's Most Amazing Vacation Rentals. "It took me away from YouTube for a more traditional broadcasting. If you've ever had the pleasure of being working on the production floor you'll be aware that the durations are long. They're 16-hour days and it's lots of 'Hurry up and then wait'. The time has come to prepare for hair, makeup, all is done. The lines are written down to draw in your mind And then you're thinking"No, I'm not kidding you're going to have to take a pause""

In the midst of a break that was long duration, Jo would write. "Writing was something I enjoyed and wanted to turn it a career." After covid came on and the show ended, her main source of income dwindled.

"I felt anxious like everyone else. I decided to share images from my journals. After 100 days, I started sharing my journal with everyone on Instagram Stories. I pondered, "Hey I think this might become a membership, perhaps people would pay to be in a virtual world with me to write in an entire group. So, that's how JoClub was created. That was 4 years ago. It's crazy!"

In this Netflix program, Jo realized that journaling was the lens through her eyes that she saw the world. "It wasn't a mere hobby. When you travel every two days, you're exhausted. There's something you're doing totally unrelated to the job that you're paid for.

"You know that this is the way I understand the world. It's a way of life. For me, it became apparent to put aside all the other stuff, that what they are unable to take away from me is my writing. It was important for me to incorporate this into the next chapter in my professional life."

Her accomplishments are bigger than she can imagine.

Jo took on the project. "I posted three videos a week, in three languages. It was my responsibility to recruit employees and then remove them. I could learn how to build the machine to create content."

Something needed to be changed. "I wanted to not work. If you're exhausted or burned out, which is common among creators it's unlikely that you'll be able to earn money. I've realized that if I intend to take on a job I'm planning to maintain for the foreseeable future I'll need to discover an avenue to take my face from some of possibilities to make money."

Jo was looking to start something bigger than she. The group started by a bang on Zoom: "The membership started at $19 a month with the added benefit of one live call a month and I'd send out daily journaling prompts to everybody's mailbox."

The idea was to provide an experience similar to a yoga class. The class consisted of two questions which were followed by a debate and two further questions, and finally break-out rooms. "It was IP (intellectual property)," she recalls. "After about six months, I began asking myself, can I teach facilitators about how to run these events? Indeed, will facilitators be of benefit to JoClub in ways that I could have imagined? They were looking to "extract the good" and work with JoClub facilitators, who were once participants in JoClub in the creation of an art journaling format as well as a "bring your own music' format for musicians who are just getting started as musicians, and so on.

"Now there are six or more sessions every month. I'll host any session that I'd like," she continues. "Beautiful moments that I didn't have imagined happening, began to occur in my retreats. I conducted a pilot project at a university and we're working on different problems. I could not have done it if I kept it in Jo Franco's circle that I was in the top."

Community and culture

"An fascinating aspect of the membership model is the fact that it helps create an environment," Jo says. "If you sign up for membership and they're entering your home. Then you're able to design your dream home in any way you'd like." Jo and her team studied ways of creating more engaging threads, so that "people are talking about their experiences in areas of the community, which means they're having the feeling that they're receiving what they've have paid for."

"It's the distinction between members and an audience," she adds. "An audience is likely to engage with your content but that doesn't mean it's an exchange of ideas. If I upload an image, and somebody comments and I reply on a forum, however with the community I'm curating, I'm involved in the actual design of what happens when members join."

Jo has thought several times regarding the procedure for onboarding as well as how we treat newly joined members. "How do we mitigate those who walk into a space and being unsure of anybody? That is when you start to focus on the curating of culture, and this is why many people remain for decades in the future."

She knows that this isn't simple. "It's an art one must be awed about in order to improve continuously, as an active membership is a continuous thing. If you're not attentive to news and developments and developments, you'll lose each members you've had."

It's clear that Jo has brought the empathy and self-awareness she gained from her journaling into the way she manages her membership. She believes that journaling can aid in gaining awareness of yourself. Not taught at school: "We're not given tools for processing emotion. It's possible to help yourself when you're sinking. It was difficult for me to understand these advantages. It was just a great hobby. As I grew older, I discovered, "Damn, I've been hiding my secrets'!"

People ask 'Jo, you're just 30 How did you manage to do this How did you do it? I wrote it down, and the whole thing worked." she smiles.

More details

To find out more about Jo Franco and to become Jo Franco's JoClub member, go to www.joclub.world. JoClub Visit joclub.world.

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