If you feel like you’re always in “marketing mode,” you need to read “Don’t Market More. Matter More,” from Amanda Natividad, where she talks with Jay Acunzo.

If you’re not saying anything that compels people to seek you out, you were always going to be exposed the moment the pipes changed.

And the pipes are always changing. Jay’s reminder that distribution channels aren’t neutral systems of pipes — they’re ad networks with opinions about what should spread — is something I think about weekly.

While social media platforms may have “worked” for you in the past, they were never made to send you free traffic. Those platforms, the pipes as mentioned above, have changed, and they will always change, and more than likely not in your favor.

Marketing more is a race to the bottom, but mattering more is gonna cost you. It’s time, effort, and energy. It ain’t cheap. But if you want cheap, you make something for everyone, which I’m sure is not what you’re called to do.

Your work matters to you, but it’s hard to convince anybody that it should matter to them.

It’s not that your work is bad, it’s that no one knows about, which is why you should get awareness off your plate, something Michelle Warner talked about with Jay Acunzo – find out what I’m talking about here.

I got to do a Substack Live with Julie Laufer (she interviewed me on her Be Cringe Podcast here), and we covered the NY Knicks, finding work, being in alignment, and more.

THREE BIG IDEAS

Trust is a credential. Julie landed a social media strategy client, not because that’s their background, but because of the trust that the client had in them. Build trust, build relationships, and see where that takes you!

Being a generalist can be an asset. There’s a role for the generalist, the problem-solver, the hard-working Josh Hart of the New York Knicks position, but most places / teams are hesitant to hire since it’s so non-quantifiable. It’s easier to hire someone who has done a certain role for a decade rather than the person that can pull together a team.

Alignment feels GOOD. Find bits and pieces where you can squeeze in moments of alignment throughout your day, and then do that over and over again over many weeks, months, and years.

TWO ACTIONS:

Stop waiting for the perfect positioning! Pull together what you can, do what you have to do, and stop waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect alignment of everything that comes together, to start doing the thing that you want to do. Stop waiting!

Trust your gut! The “right” choice is tempting, and lets you off the hook. But picking the path with more risk just might be the thing that’ll get you where you need to be.

ONE QUOTE:

“It’s like, well, I’m supposed to want a job,” said Julie. “I’m supposed to want health insurance. Like, I have a three-year-old. Yeah, yeah. Like, so, it’s hard to make those opposite choices. But I find comfort in the fact that they feel so right.”

Be sure to subscribe to Julie’s This Might Be Cringe newsletter!

In an interview with Frame Set, cinematographer Todd Banhazl (Winning Time, Hustlers, Nike) is asked for advice for young cinematographers trying to make work like his:

Don’t make work like mine, make the most personal thing possible, and really try to spend time shooting what you love in the way that you love it. I really mean that. I don’t know if that means it sounds like a platitude, but like, there’s a lot of cinematographers out there now that I feel like the technology has been democratized, like everyone’s a DP, so I think the thing that sets you apart is making the work personal, and like being brave to make it personal.

Writing good subject lines and building our websites is great and all, but it’s secondary to being brave and making the work you love.

Watch Banhazi talking about “The Cameras Behind Olivia Rodrigo’s Lo-Fi Music Video.”

You’ve followed the advice, watched how everyone else is doing, tried all the tricks and trending things, and you hated it all. Just dreaded, it right?

You spent all that time begrudgingly, doing something you despised, then wondered why it didn’t resonate.

The problem with modern marketing is that we’re performing for everybody. We’re sanding off the edges, turning ourselves inside out to impress complete strangers on platforms that are built like casinos for attention.

Wouldn’t it feel so much better if you were just talking to people who got you, instead?

In 2023 I knew I wanted to talk to more people about leaving social media. Not selling courses, or writing a book, but talking to people about leaving social media. I started hosting weekly Zoom calls and I don’t do “marketing” anymore. I just tell people who like my work what I’m doing from week to week.

You’ve done the same thing for years on social media, but your followers missed probably 80% of everything you posted. It’s not that nobody liked your work, it’s that nobody knew about it.

It’s amazing what happens when you can actually reach your fans. Your email subscriber count may be less than your social media follower count, but that’s okay.

Because the truth is this: you can build a fanbase, but if you can’t reach your fanbase, you’re at the mercy of the algorithms, and you don’t want to play that game because it’s a game you can’t win and it never ends.

Instead, send an email once a week, talking about the work you make for the people who’ve signed up and said they want to hear from you.

When you can reach those people, they can support your work, which makes the whole “marketing” thing feel a lot easier.

If you lose access to your Gmail account, then what? That’s why I say your email is important enough to pay for, because if things go sideways, good luck reaching any for help!

I’ve been using Fastmail since 2014. I ditched Google Workspace in early 2025.

If you’d like to have less Google in your life, get on one of these calls. They’re not webinars. They’re not step by step walk throughs. These are for people scared, uneasy, afraid to tackle this sort of things alone!

• Monday, June 15th at 9:00AM EDT → https://luma.com/qebt5cj9
  
• Friday, June 19th at 11:00AM EDT → https://luma.com/1k3gnx6a

You can post about things being unfair, or you can do the work and make art.

I’ve seen this from all sorts of creative folks, from people just starting out to Grammy nominees, dating back to my music blog days in the early 2000s.

I get it – part of the problem is that people aren’t aware that Spotify doesn’t pay well. Or that simply “liking” something “really does help” with the algorithm.

But what resonates for me with this clip of comedian Anthony Jeselnik is that no one is gonna see him hurt. There’s enough hurt in this business. Why add to the pity party? Who does a crack in the armor serve?

The art doesn’t need excuses, it needs work.

From Lucy Werner of Hype Yourself, talking about how to get closer to the sorts of people you want to be working with (from one our recent Escape Pod Zoom calls).

“One of my mantras is: put yourself where you don’t belong. Yes, it’s good to have your squad of people doing similar things to empathize with, but I always like to be the only PR (person) in a room full of artists and creatives. That’s my happy space — they’re the people I want to hang out with.”

Lucy did this at a market hall, where people were “selling jeans, or candles, or perfumes, or whatever. And I just sat there with a sign, being like, 15 minutes of free PR or branding advice.”

She said she was busy all day “because we were the only service-based people sat in a market store around product sellers.”

Joi Katskee does a radio show, and on one of our calls she told us how she talked about her program at an open mic night.

I made flyers for Social Media Escape Club, and set them out at a punk rock flea market while selling some old music gear. This led to about a dozen face to face conversations with all sorts of people about wanting to get off social media.

The common theme here is none of us hoped for an algorithm to bring the right people to us, we just showed up.

So if you’ve been thinking that social media is the only way to find your people, I just gave you three examples of meeting people in the real world, one conversation at a time. Instead of chasing follower counts or engagement, find new ways to get around the people you want to work with.

And start figuring that out with other creative folks by joining one of our upcoming calls!

In this conversation via Substack Live with Dr. Zeest Khan, we talk about leaving social media, building community that actually matters, and why chasing joy beats the heck out of chasing metrics.

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