Caroline in the Garden, a musician in Atlanta, recently wrote, “I’m disgusted with myself over my phone use,” saying “my phone usage during this ‘publicity cycle’ was getting to be upwards of 6-7 hours a day.”

They’ve since deleted the social media apps and wrote a new song.

That can happen when we don’t spend all our time on social media.

How grand could we be if we spent 6-7 hours a day on your craft? Or just three? One?

That’s not possible, right?

(more…)

I opened Josh Spector’s email recently, and saw this:

“As the artist, as the creative person… I’m the lead magnet.”
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This line from Seth Werkheiser’s Social Media Escape Club newsletter resonated deeply with me.
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He went on to say:
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​“People signed up for me, so they’re getting me. And if people get huffy about it and unsubscribe?
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Bye.
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I don’t want to hold back. I’m not a magazine. I don’t have editors. I want to write what I want to write.”​
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Exactly.

That quote game from this newsletter, which actually came from one of the weekly Zoom calls I host every week.

This is why it’s so important to talk about your work. Like, out loud. With friends. Over dinner. In the mirror. On a podcast. Speak the things you do, refine it.

This isn’t about an elevator pitch (who buys things in elevators?), but about the depth and distance that the words you speak might travel.

If words can make us cry (from a break up), or jump for joy (“we’d like to offer you this position”), then surely our words can do the same.

I love this “extremely non-comprehensive list of ways to increase your surface area for luck and magic and synchronicities and signs,” from Holisticism.

Make something with your hands without multitasking. I like to call these “quiet thought hobbies.” Cook dinner slowly. Write a letter to your international bestie. Arrange flowers. You can’t do magic while you’re multitasking — presence is the prerequisite.

And…

“Lying to yourself about your wants is a great way to sever the inner connection to your intuitive self. Get the pizza. Go with your instinct. Trust yourself, see what happens. Maybe on your walk to the pizza shop you’ll notice a picture in the main window of a gallery; you take a picture to reverse image search and find that the artist is living, and actually resides on the street next to yours, and has an email on their website, and you reach out to do a studio visit and BOOM, they become your creative mentor. You never know which one door will open the next. Maybe your intuition knows something your practical mind doesn’t.”

There is a time and place for email lists and DNS settings and websites, but before all of that is the very human element of existence, and you’d be wise to prioritize that before everything else.

Without the energy of life there’s no art, and therefore no need for landing pages and press kits.

Denna Seymour asked me a question I get a lot: “how do you get new people when you’re not on social?”

By doing cool stuff with cool people, just like this.

I did that Lex Roman mixer thing, met interesting people, you and I connected, and now we’re talking. A few people listening to this are gonna be like, “Who’s this guy?” They’re gonna click over, and a couple of them are gonna be like, “This is cool,” and they’re gonna subscribe.

And I just keep doing that over and over again. I reach out and try to get people to do Substack Lives with me — come on, we’ll do a live stream together. They tell people, “Next Tuesday I’m talking live with so-and-so.” I put that on my website, they tell their friends, and so on.

I literally try to do that week after week after week, like 50 weeks a year. Get on a podcast, do a live, do a live stream — over and over again. That’s how I do it.

Everyone is different, and has varying bandwidth for their marketing and outreach efforts.

Have you tried billboards? Sky writing? I’m half-kidding, of course, but there’s a million different things you can do between social media and doing nothing. It’s up to you to find what works for you.

Listen to “Building a Business Without Social Media with Seth Werkheiser” here.

During last week’s call with the amazing Meg Lewis, I retold her story about being true to who you are, and how that brings the right people into your orbit – the people you wanna work with!

Exactly. We don’t give people enough credit. There’s so much advice out there that you need to be a certain way to be successful, to win big, to niche down… advice that goes against who we actually are, which is really complicated, interesting people.

It’s so freeing to realize that I’m constantly very complicated. My career is so strange. It doesn’t make any sense. You can’t put me in a box or even explain me to anybody else. And that goes against all the advice that everyone always gives.

But we really underestimate people’s ability to be comfortable with complexity. People are totally fine with the fact that I’m unusual, and they still somehow get it. That allows me the freedom to keep being unusual and complicated. I don’t feel like I’ve wedged myself into a category I can’t get out of.

Being loudly complicated… people get it, and I’m so amazed that they do. People understand that humans are human, and now more than ever, people really want to see real human beings. That’s how you truly innovate: being somebody and doing something different than anybody else could possibly do.

Any of us could play the game and follow the formulas for success. But we’re not going to be fulfilled. We’re going to feel terrible, because we’re still performing as this other version of ourselves.

The pressure to niche down is big – we see it everywhere, pushed especially from the social media platforms. As Jaime Derringer says, “the algorithm. The feed, the platform, the notification. These are all literally designed to sort us, to puts us into categories, so it can feeds us content that confirms and deepens those categories.”

But as Meg says, “we really underestimate people’s ability to be comfortable with complexity.” We are expansive, and deep, and there are people out there that will resonate with your depth!

If you’re done performing as the bland, algorithmic-friendly version of yourself, you belong here.

In our recent “Why Every Artist Needs a Website” group call, someone asked about including your credentials (like a Phd.) on your site.

Someone with a Phd. chimed in with a bit of caution, basically saying that if you have a professional license and malpractice insurance, talk to your agent before putting your credentials on a website that isn’t directly related to your practice.

Like, include your credentials on your psychology practice website, sure. But you’d probably want to talk to your insurer before putting it on your life coach website.

This is definitely a case of “talk to a professional” when dealing with the nuances of your particular field of work.

Sitting down to write your next newsletter shouldn’t be painful. Not when you post a few times a week on Substack Notes, or have an archive of years of posts on various social media platforms. You might even have long abandoned blogs, or YouTube channels.

You’ve put out years of thoughts and ideas and observations into the world, never to be seen or heard from again, so don’t be afraid to revisit them!

You can copy and paste them, or just write a whole new take on an idea you had five years ago – whatever you do, it’ll work because it’s from you, and where you’re at right now.

As I said in “Writing a Newsletter Shouldn’t Beat You Up,” this doesn’t need to be hard.

“Your newsletter writing shouldn’t be a prison sentence. It shouldn’t feel like digging ditches. It shouldn’t be fraught with stress, or like dealing with a horrible boss. None of these things are desirable, and yet so many times we create these situations for ourselves.”

Maybe you struggle with sending out a regularly scheduled newsletter. You know you should send something to your subscribers, but some days it just feels harder than others.

Well, come to Thursday’s NOTES TO NEWS LETTERS Zoom call and join the conversation. One blog post, or one “webinar with a presentation deck” won’t have all the answers, but meeting with other creative people with the same struggles might help you figure this out!

NOTES TO NEWS LETTERS ZOOM CALL
Thurs, May 14 from 2:00PM – 3:00PM EDT (recording available)
Register here: https://luma.com/fku24gz8

Well, this was a bit of sunshine in my inbox recently, from photographer Gritchelle Fallesgon:

“I recently attended a Zoom gathering where singer and artist Nikki Lerner said, “Stop hoarding your creativity.” Those words really hit home and nudged me to get this out of my drafts and into your inbox.”

I set up that Zoom gathering, with two lovely people who happened to form choirs, a wonderful display of not hoarding your creativity, for sure!

But as Gritchelle mentions, this also goes for sending out a newsletter that’s been sitting in drafts for awhile, too! People signed up for your email list, and you’ve been doing cool stuff – so don’t hoard that creativity from the people who most likely want to know about it!