We recently connected with Christopher Aggett and have shared our conversation below.
Christopher, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?
Absolutely. Being successful is not a simple task, neither does it come easily. It is something that some people may never realise depending on their mindsets. On a personal level, I always set targets and move forward if I hit them. So, will being successful ever happen If I do that? I certainly believe trail and error is key to success. When it comes to writing, I have learnt a lot from my mistakes, and that makes me improve. This has been echoed by many guests who have appeared on my show. In fact, we ask them all, what does success look like to you. The most common answer is that they got to keep doing what they were doing. On the rare occasion we got an amazing answer. They already have a great family and life, so they were successful. So, once again, it would seem that success could well be a mindset. Practicing gratitude could be a huge step towards feeling satisfied and successful.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
My name is Christopher CJ Aggett. My journey has not been a simple, or common one. Having joined the British Army at the age of 18, I was being forced into growing up. I was quiet, shy, and soft. Education, or pride in my own education had never been apparent until I started doing well on courses in the Army. I found the thrill of achievement. I enjoyed 6.5 years of service before returning home to my young family. Suddenly, I found myself searching for a purpose. Nothing felt very satisfying and it was a real struggle. There aren’t many ways for people, or myself, to understand why I started writing. During this odd time of my life my grandfather passed away. He was a proud man, an inspiration, and someone I really looked up to. So, obviously, that was tough. But, it stirred something within me. It somehow unlocked a creative itch I didn’t know existed, not to mention needed to be scratched. And, with no knowhow, and a poor English result in school, I began a self-publishing journey. My confidence in writing was rock-bottom. I remember being laughed at in English by my class-mates and teacher thanks to one of my poor stories. It always sticks in my mind and is what I use as motivation to work on myself where I can. I went on a mission to improve myself and reach the goal of self-publishing a book. I did that. No one, including myself, could ever have predicted where that would lead to. Since that moment, creativity has become my passion. I have worked on more books, screenplays, and launched and hosted my very own podcast on writing. I always feel that you can never know what is around the corner. I feel that the past 8 years of my life are proof of that with my path changing often into unknown directions. That podcast started thanks to the help the Writing Community on Twitter gave me. I, along with Christopher Hooley, grew our very own writing community with our podcast. I worked, and work tirelessly on this passion and soon after it was a podcast, I turned it into a video podcast. Then, a live streaming YouTube podcast. The podcast has grown and grown. We have interviewed some of the biggest author from around the world, and some of the best indie-authors we have found. We have over 350 shows. It never seems like we have done so much, yet we keep going. And amazing reviews and comments come in. This one still blows my mind: “The Writing Community Chat Show is the number one writing podcast to listen to in 2024.”
This accolade is featured in Feedspot’s article on the “10 Best UK
Writing Podcasts You Must Follow in 2024.”
Finding posts like this really make us feel like the work is with it. It is a passion, it is growling along with the brilliant family along with it. I feel my journey is a testament to anyone that can follow a passion if they want to, or that they may still find their passion. Of all the lessons I have learned, I feel that one stand out more than any other. That would be: CONSISTENCY IS KEY. You will improve when you create. In writing, podcasting, media production, anything. I create all the graphics and media for my show, all the merch, and more, and I love it. All skills I have self learnt and developed. All of the things I have done have improved with time. I have kept consistent.
For those wishing to find my podcast, YouTube channel, or more about the show, you can search for The Writing Community Chat Show.
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
My co-host on the show is Christopher Hooley, yes, that’s rights, ANOTHER Chris. There are two of us. Which is why we used to go by left-Christ and right-Chris. That was down to how we both appeared on the screen of our live shows. Recently I have adopted CJ, as my middle name is John. I got to know Chris Hooley on Twitter. He was a member of the writing community that helped me out a lot as I was writing my first book, Deep – The Climb Of Truth. He was a great supportive member. I was very grateful for his support and one day I was wondering how I could give back to the writing community. This is where the random idea of starting a podcast came from. I randomly reached out to him and boom, he said yes. That was the birth of The Writing Community Chat Show. Since then, we have worked hard to improve the show and got to know each other very well. From hosting the show together and letting loose on our aftershow where we reveal our personalities to each other and our paid members who join us for a chat. We chat often via voice notes and continue to come up with great ideas to improve the show and come up with new business ideas. There are things in development as we speak. Over the past year, Chris Hooley has been a shining light and a person who helps me remain more positive mentally and physically. He has given up alcohol for over a year, worked on his mental health, and been a person who has guided me towards a more positive mindset. We both have been open about our depression and his turn-around has been exceptional and impressive. In recent months he has been a great person to look up to and to take positive advice from. A lot of which has been available to read on his substack.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Building our audience for The Writing Community Chat Show has not been the easiest. This is down to just how niche our niche is. We interview authors about their life stories, books, and writing. So, unless people are specifically interested in that person, it is often difficult for us to attract people to tune in. This does not take away from the amazing fans we have and now call our family. We have nearly 12 thousand followers on X, formally Twitter, and that is down to the writing community and the reason the show exists. We have found that being genuine, supportive, and growing your following as a person, is a far more effective way to build an audience. But we recently have discovered that putting our eggs in the Twitter basket may come back to haunt us. We are building a following on a lot of other social platforms, but the fact X seems to by dying could be a big loss for us. Which is a lesson in itself. This is why we feel Substack is a great platform for creatives. Not only does it have a lot of like-minded people, it automatically builds you e-mail subscriber list. If X collapses we lose our followers on there. All of them. There is no way to track them. With the email list building, then we always have a way to connect to our audience no matter which platform they are using. If you are just starting up then use an email list. I put it off for way too long as I felt it to be an outdated form of contact. Now I regret this. Be yourself, and genuine, on social media. People will relate to you and follow you, especially if you engage with them. Do not push sales for sales sake. This puts people off. And lastly, there is no point pushing books, as an example, to the writing community, you need to build a following of people in the reading community too, for obvious reasons.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Thewritingcommunitychatshow.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewritingcommunitychatshow/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheWccs/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-aggett-397407235/
- Twitter: https://x.com/CJAggett
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheWritingCommunityChatShow
- Other: Our substack where people can be members and tune into our shows live and get early access: https://substack.com/@thewccs?utm_source=user-menu
TiKTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thewccs
