Terms

"JoClub stands for the Journaling Club, but also fits in with my name," Jo Franco begins. "When I began writing, I knew I had these large feelings. I also had older siblings who were not interested in hearing about it. Thus, I started writing."

"I was born without a passport, in hiding, speaking Portuguese as well as learning English by tripping across," she recalls. "I acquired a variety of other languages because I was always awed by being recognized. Meanwhile, I was very unpopular because I was considered to be one of the few kids. I looked different to everybody around me. I was the smallest kid so I had this quiet tone of voice and quiet persona.

"Of course I'm not able to think back now that's the way it went, but in the meantime there was a constant ache of  being misunderstood?' and so many of us go through the same thing."

Fortunately, Jo had the tool of journaling: "I had a more compassionate relationship with myself, being able to observe without judgement. I wrote about all this negative things, yet I know good things were happening within my own life. I began to alter my writing, not just what I had written and then, in a bizarre way, reverse engineering my perception of things since I was looking for positive things. I had to look for positive events to come up with positive things that I could write about. I began to be a more optimistic person. This tool saved me."

Making sense of the situation

When she attended university at the University of Manhattan, Jo was overwhelmed by the volume of voices she competed with. But she found much-needed space within her journals. "It didn't matter if I resided living in the States or traveling I had this tool that allowed me to come back home to my own self.

"My "why" is to give individuals the same sense of 'You got you, no matter how ugly situations can be. In addition, you can support yourself emotionally, but it's beautiful to write down your journey - because in documenting it you can show a tiny gesture of gratitude for the fact that it began to happen. It's always easy to fit into your own skin and in your own head."

"There's scientific evidence to back this up," she adds. "There have been clinical trials of recording gratitude as a method of therapy. The people who write their gratitude down are more content."

"Give your mind relief. Let the weight go out of your mind and write it on the page. When you write about unpleasant issues, you grant your self a buffer, allowing you to think about it with an empathetic reaction. Emotions will drive us crazy. They're at the heart of everything. They are they are at the core of confidence, at base of charisma, and in the genesis of entering a room and being able attract good fortune."

"Maybe it's a member"

Jo definitely had a lot of goodness by 2020. Thanks to her YouTube channel that had over a million subscribers, she received money to travel. "I was living this exciting, private life but behind the scenes, I wrote. This was the essence of me the only thing I did was journaling."

In January 2020 she was offered a Netflix task as presenter for The World's Most Amazing Vacation Rentals. "It was a step away from YouTube and into the traditional way of presenting. If anybody's ever been on a production set, they know these days are long. There are 16-hour work days, and there's an endless cycle of 'Hurry up and sit'. It's time to get ready: makeup, hair all completed. There are lines written in your head and then they're like, "No I'm not kidding you're supposed to take a pause for a moment'!"

Between those pauses that would last for a long time, Jo would write. "Writing was something I loved which is why I wanted to turn it into a business." After covid came on and the show ended the main source of income stopped.

"I was nervous, just as was everyone other. I began sharing pictures of my journals. Then, 100 days later, I had journaled to the world via Instagram Stories. I thought, "Hey I think this could be a membership' - maybe people would pay to be inside a virtual space alongside me, and write as a group. This was how JoClub began. That was four years ago, which is crazy!"

While watching the Netflix show, Jo realized that journaling was a lens through which she saw the world. "It wasn't just an interest. If you're on the road for two days, it's hard to not be exhausted. There's something you're doing which has nothing to do with the work you're paid for.

"You realise, this is how I understand the meaning of my world. This is a lifestyle. It became clear to me that if I let go of all other things, the only that they can't take from me is writing. It was important for me to bake that into the next phase of my professional life."

Making something greater than her own

Jo put herself into the project. "I was posting three videos a week, in three languages. I needed to recruit people, fire people. I was able to learn how to create a content machine."

Something had to change. "I did not want to constantly work. If you're tired or burnt out, which is a common occurrence for creators and you're exhausted, you'll never be able to make money. I realized that if this is my career path that I'm going to maintain for the foreseeable future I'll need to figure out ways to keep my name from the opportunities to make money."

Jo wanted to create something that was bigger than she. The journaling group was launched with a bang on Zoom: "The membership started at just $19 per month, with the added benefit of one live call a month and I'd send out daily journal prompts to everybody's inbox."

She wanted to curate an experience similar to a yoga class. Two questions, followed by a discussion, then another prompt, and finally breakout rooms. "It was IP (intellectual property)," she recalls. "After the period of six months I started asking myself, can I train facilitators to run these sessions? Indeed, will these facilitators benefit JoClub in ways I have never could? The participant would like to "extract the goodness" as well as work with facilitators who were former JoClub members, to develop the art journaling form and a "bring your own song' for budding musicians, and the like.

"Now we have six plus sessions a month and I'm hosting any number I like," she continues. "Beautiful aspects that I would never think of happening have begun such as retreats I organize and I ran a pilot program at a university and we're working on different issues. The way I would have handled this if I had kept it in Jo Franco's circle that I was at the top."

Cultural and social cohesion

"An intriguing aspect of the membership model is that it creates the culture" she adds. "If somebody's paying for a membership, they're walking into your home, which means it's your choice to decorate the house however you like." Jo and her team have researched ways to create more engaging threads so "people can talk in communal spaces so that people feel they're receiving their money's worth."

"It's the difference between an audience and a membership," she adds. "An audience will respond to whatever content you're posting, but it's not a dialogue. If I share a video and people comment, I'll comment back in a forum, however with a community that I'm curating, I'm a part of the design of what takes place when they join the community."

Jo is thinking a lot about the onboarding sequence and how we treat newly joined members. "How do we handle that person walking into a room feeling like they don't know anybody? This is the time to get into the art of curation and this is why people stay for a long time."

She knows this is not easy. "It's something is something you must be enthusiastic about in order to keep improving since a member's membership is something that is constantly evolving. If you don't listen to the news then you'll be losing every member you've got."

It's clear that Jo is bringing the compassion and self-awareness she gained from journals into the manner she handles her membership. In fact, she believes journaling can help you become aware of yourself. not taught in school: "We're not given tools to deal with emotions. There are tools that can help you save yourself in times when you're losing your footing. I was astonished by these advantages. This was a fun hobby. As I grew older I realized, 'Damn, I've been hiding my secrets'!"

People often ask her 'Jo you're only 30years old, What did you accomplish through all this? I just journalled about it and it all worked out." she laughs.

More details

To learn more details about Jo Franco and to become a member of JoClub, visit, go on joclub.world.