Category: sethwCategory: sethw

You think if you leave social media you’ll lose community and clients, right?

Well, what happens if you get locked out of your account? Or the platform shuts down?

You’d definitely lose all your community and clients then, right?!

So are you really comfortable leaving all of those people in the hands of the techbro industrial complex?

What’s the preventative action you could take today to ensure you can reach your people?

Consider that most of your potential clients are in their inbox all day.
And you could email those potential clients while everyone else is making dance videos or writing 1000 word “thought leader” posts on LinkedIn.

Perhaps the question isn’t “what if I lose people by leaving social media?”
The question becomes, “how can I future-proof my community and clients WITHOUT social media?”

What could this future-proofing strategy look like for you?

​This Focus Escape Pod is a 90-minute group conversation for people who are ready to get away from Gmail and Google, but want a calm, chill, honest place to talk through what comes next. No pitches or demos or upsells. Just shared experiences, calm conversation, and practical paths forward.

Wednesday, February 25 from 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM EST

​Things we’ll explore during this 90 minute call:

• ​Understanding the basics of forwarding messages, exporting your emails, and more.
• ​Real stories from people who left Gmail and discovered their work, relationships, and inboxes were fine!
• ​How others chose a new provider based on values like privacy or simplicity

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Roddy Bottum (of Faith No More fame) recently wrote “These Rooms,” which goes against all pragmatic guidance on what an email subject line or headline should be.

But this is art.

He’s promoting his current book tour (more art), and if anyone could get away with uploading the tour poster and writing, “hey, book tour is going great. Hope to see you out there,” well, it’d be Roddy. Instead he wrote about 1,800 before getting to the “point.”

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This week musician Nolan Green joined our Thursday Escape Pod Zoom call, where he talked about:

• Learning about “recoupables” in the music industry.
• Sending his demo to 30 labels and getting signed by Network Records
• Moving to the Netherlands from the United States
• Embracing happy accidents
• Finding joy in the creation process over live performance pressure
• Trusting that authentic creations will find its audience organically
• His current Netherlands Soundscapes project
• Working as a photographer at CMJ in the early 2000s

Audio replay is available in your Memberful Account. And from our Mini Escape Pod session we got into:

• Website redesign focusing on single message versus multiple interests dilemma (we’ll figure this one out, someday! haha)
• Migration from Substack to WordPress definitely isn’t seamless
• Spam prevention strategies: CAPTCHA, double opt-in, country blocking via Cloudflare
• How personal websites allow authentic expression vs platform uniformity constraints
• Patreon versus Gumroad for paid offerings

Social Media Escape Club isn’t just about ditching Instagram, but the continued discussion and support after we’ve left behind those platforms behind. Hope to see you on an upcoming call!

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From Ana Roman, in their interview with Thought Enthusiast:

“A hundred times a day I think about artist-owned web spaces and how to build stronger communities that mutually nourish artists and creators… We need cozy web spaces where artists control the platforms, not algorithms designed to extract our labor.“

As I’ve said, maybe centralized kingdoms of power and influence aren’t the answer. It’s time for those in the “creator economy” to work together and take back the means to spreading culture and vibes.