Writing Off Social: The Podcast | Build Your Platform and Grow Your Email List Without Social Media
Sep 29, 2026 · 40 min · 10 segments
Recently, during a group coaching call, one of our students told us she’d love to find someone to collaborate with in her business. Then she asked us a question: “How did you two find each other?”…
Sandy CooperHost
Mary K. TillerHost
Once upon a time in the very early 2000s, I, Sandy, was a mom with small children who knew I had also been called by God to write and speak.
I didn't have any friends who wrote or spoke, and even if I did, I was up to my eyeballs taking care of my babies.
So mostly, I just wandered around Barnes & Noble in a sleep-deprived, caffeinated stupor in the Christian women's section and fantasized about writing books that would one day be on those shelves.
It was She Speaks, put on by Lisa Turkhurst and the Proverbs 31 Ministries team.
I remember driving alone from Louisville, Kentucky to Charlotte, North Carolina.
and walking into the ballroom at the Embassy Suites Hotel for the first session and being completely overwhelmed by the fact that I was surrounded by probably three to four hundred Christian women who also felt called by God to write and speak.
And also watching the P31 team share the stage and teach the sessions and interact with each other was incredibly inspiring to me.
Other women who do what I do and speak my language and maybe women who I can someday work with just like that.
Lisa Turkhurst was the very first blog I ever read, and for a few years, it was the only blog I read.
Those were what I often refer to as the heydays of blogging, where everyone congregated in the comments and talked to each other.
It was that experience that propelled me to eventually start my own blog in 2008 and open my first Facebook account when I had an eight-year-old, a six-year-old, and a newly adopted one-year-old.
And also during that time of reading Lisa's blog, I learned more about how she collaborated with other women.
Emily P. Freeman, who wrote Chatting at the Sky at the time, her sister, Michael Lynn Smith, aka The Nester from The Nesting Place, Sophie Hudson, aka Boo Mama, Melanie Shankle, Big Mama, and Missy Dollahan from It's Almost Nap Time.
I loved seeing how they all seemed to know each other and were meeting up in person, and I longed for that kind of friendship.
Blogging afforded me so many great connections with Christian female bloggers all over the country.
For years, literal years, I tried to form partnerships or writing collaborations with them.
I don't know if anyone else remembers this, but during that time, I believe it was the Nester who started the 31 Days blog hop.
Once upon a time in the very early 2000s, I, Sandy, was a mom with small children who knew I had also been called by God to write and speak.
I didn't have any friends who wrote or spoke, and even if I did, I was up to my eyeballs taking care of my babies.
So mostly, I just wandered around Barnes & Noble in a sleep-deprived, caffeinated stupor in the Christian women's section and fantasized about writing books that would one day be on those shelves.
It was She Speaks, put on by Lisa Turkhurst and the Proverbs 31 Ministries team.
I remember driving alone from Louisville, Kentucky to Charlotte, North Carolina.
and walking into the ballroom at the Embassy Suites Hotel for the first session and being completely overwhelmed by the fact that I was surrounded by probably three to four hundred Christian women who also felt called by God to write and speak.
And also watching the P31 team share the stage and teach the sessions and interact with each other was incredibly inspiring to me.
Other women who do what I do and speak my language and maybe women who I can someday work with just like that.
Lisa Turkhurst was the very first blog I ever read, and for a few years, it was the only blog I read.
Those were what I often refer to as the heydays of blogging, where everyone congregated in the comments and talked to each other.
It was that experience that propelled me to eventually start my own blog in 2008 and open my first Facebook account when I had an eight-year-old, a six-year-old, and a newly adopted one-year-old.
And also during that time of reading Lisa's blog, I learned more about how she collaborated with other women.
Emily P. Freeman, who wrote Chatting at the Sky at the time, her sister, Michael Lynn Smith, aka The Nester from The Nesting Place, Sophie Hudson, aka Boo Mama, Melanie Shankle, Big Mama, and Missy Dollahan from It's Almost Nap Time.
I loved seeing how they all seemed to know each other and were meeting up in person, and I longed for that kind of friendship.
Blogging afforded me so many great connections with Christian female bloggers all over the country.
For years, literal years, I tried to form partnerships or writing collaborations with them.
I don't know if anyone else remembers this, but during that time, I believe it was the Nester who started the 31 Days blog hop.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
