These machines once ran in the Davis & Furber Mills, in North Andover, MA in the early 1800s.

On a local trail, part of a long abandoned rail line, there are remains of buildings, one labeled, “MANAGERS OFFICE.”

These jobs and industries used to be the focal point of someone’s lives, a source of stress and income, replaced by today’s stress and income which will be long forgotten 50 years from when you read this.

Everything will be forgotten, which is actually pretty freeing.

This morning Cara Alwill and I had a lovely chat on Substack Live, and we covered so many wonderful topics:

Sending the email (don’t wait on algorithms): take matters into your own hands are start reaching out to other creative people, and maybe send more newsletters!

“If people are unsubscribing from you, it means you have a point of view.” — Cara Alwill

Scrappy vs. polished: the world has enough “optimized” text, it’s time to go feral.

Building your own team before anyone hands you one: start working with people in the early stages so you can sniff out the creeps later on.

You are the lead magnet: Forget the niche, you are the reason someone reads.

Just do the thing: Stop announcing, stop planning every little move, and start making.

“There’s a fine line between inspiration and procrastination.” — Cara Alwill

From my interview with Julie Laufer and her Be Cringe Podcast (edited slightly for readability), on the difference between hoping the algorithm smiles upon you versus putting your hope in the work you’re doing.

Spend a sliver of the time you waste on social media on your art and your craft. That way, when people do notice what you do — maybe 75 people, maybe a hundred — they turn their heads because you’re genuinely that good.

That’s what you want. Not constantly promoting. Just being undeniably good at the thing.

Yeah, yeah — “be so good they can’t ignore you.” Easy for Steve Martin to say.

But challenge accepted.

Be so good that you can have the conversation. Be ready for the opportunity, in all the ways it might show up — not scrambling to make 12-second clips hoping the algorithm throws you a bone.

The hope is in the work.

Reach out to some people just outside of your orbit. Ask to be on a podcast. Talk with someone about a collaboration. Do things that are lot more fun than trying to entertain strangers on platforms that don’t exist to send you free traffic.

Watch the full interview here.

I joined some Dark Forests recently. A common theme in two of them was, “do we really want to do this?” In a bigger one, it was… well, more. More noise, more notifications, more threads, more… just, always more.

During a recent conversation, someone said they haven’t installed a new app in forever.

In the early days of the internet, it was a place I wanted to visit, but I didn’t want to live there.

Are we done?

You do the work, you make your magic, then you send a newsletter once a month and nothing really happens.

Your biggest fans (the ones who gave you their email address) get maybe 12 emails a year from you, and chances are they don’t open every one. They might see what you’re doing 4 or 5 times a year.

It’s not that your work isn’t great, it’s that no one knows about it, and it’s hard for people to get into what you’re doing if they forget about you.

You’ve got no problem posting to social media three times a day, spending hours every week engaging, but telling people what you’re doing via email feels like too much.

Think about that!

Imagine you’re a musician, and you reach out to one venue a year to book a show, your odds are terrible. If you hit up ten venues, slightly better. But fifty? Three hundred and sixty-five? Someone’s gotta say yes.

Send more emails about your new song, your new album, your new book, your next class, your next event.

Frequency isn’t some desperate tactic, it’s how you keep from fading into obscurity. It’s not spammy, people signed up for it, and if unsubscribe, then they’re not your people.

But pay attention to the people who stay. As my friend Nikki Learner says, “let’s not hoard our gifts.” Send another email newsletter this week. You’ve got years of “content” that you’ve posted on social media in the last year, start there.

Skip the BUY NOW buttons and product links, you’re not a department store. Everyone does that, then they wonder why they get 10% open rates. Treat your email audience like an ATM and they’ll burn out, then you’re back to square one, posting into the void on social media.

Instead, make your magic, then tell the people who gave you their email address.

Matthew Ferrara comes from the real estate world, and often challenges the notion that social media is the most important thing in the getting the word out. From “Why This Simple Sales Move Outperforms Social Media Marketing:”

The National Association of REALTORS® most recent survey asked 173,250 buyers a simple question: Was social media the main method used to find your real estate agent?

1% said yes.

But 37% were referred by a friend, neighbor, or relative; and another 29% used the same agent they worked with the last time.

You can not deny the foundation of “referred by a friend, neighbor, or relative,” across all business and creative fields. We make big transactions and small deals based on trust, and in the year 2026 referrals still carry a lot of weight.

You’re an artist, a poet, a musician, a creative person, and you’re tired of algorithms controlling who sees what. I was one of the first 3,000 to sign up for Twitter, I get it. But I’ve seen bands shout into the void for 10+ years on social media, and helped some artists get back to things like owning their website and direct connection to their audience with an email list.

Otherwise, it all becomes a digital hamster wheel that keeps us all spinning in place.

Here’s how you break out.

• Start looking at the profiles and about pages of the people you follow and see who they link to, what they like, who they follow.
• Start clicking the links in people’s newsletter and meet the people they’re gushing about.
• Tune into random live streams, hit play on podcasts you’ve never heard before.
• Join (and / or host) Zoom calls without expectations.
• Read the acknowledgements in books, and scan the credits of big video productions.

I know plenty of creative people doing these things a few times per week, and it puts dozens of wonderfully talented people onto their radar. I dare you to do the same!

Follow someone, subscribe, leave a thoughtful comment, send a DM or an email.

I’ve been doing this since at least 2023 and it’s radically shifted my creative vision, and given me hope for the future. Or you can continue letting an algorithm determine your fate, rather than trusting your gut and being intentional with who you let into your creative orbit.

Someone emailed me how they would paywall their work after 90 days, and was looking for some thoughts and ideas on growth and such.

First — are you “married” to the paywall? Is this paying your rent right now? I don’t want to say anything flippant if it’s keeping the lights on. But since you mention wanting to ditch it, I get the feeling you’re still figuring it out, just like we all are.

I experimented with a paywall for a while, and I hated sending my newsletter to five people at a time. I appreciated the money and support, but I didn’t appreciate that my best work was only being seen by a few people. What if the post that deeply resonated with one paid member could have attracted 100 new readers?

Every piece we put out into the world is a chance for the right person to find it. Especially when you’re just getting started. You’re coming up on a year on Substack. There are people who have just discovered you, maybe told their friends, and a large part of your work is inaccessible until they pay.

I fully believe we all need to get paid. But I think we need to build trust first. And we build trust when we’re our most comfortable selves, instead of worrying about paywalls, page counts, SEO, all of that. Get your work out there in ways you can sustain. A website and a newsletter, for example. When you start adding TikTok, long-form YouTube, and everything else, that’s where things get hectic.

The more of yourself you put out there, the more people can see and feel and read, the faster you’ll discover how they actually want to support you.

I started my Substack in 2021 and didn’t rebrand to until 2023. That’s when I started hosting Zoom calls, just kind of like, “I want to talk to more people about this stuff.” And that’s when I discovered people really wanted to talk about it, too. And that some of them would pay to be part of it. Not in some guru-funnel way, but genuinely: I had to try a bunch of different things before I found what worked for me.

Reduce friction. Get to the core of what you want to be doing, without giving yourself too many side gigs to make it work.