Category: sethwCategory: sethw

I closed my Twitter account on June 3, 2023. Over two years ago now.

Could I have grown my email list by a few more people over those two years? Met some more great people? Had some posts go viral and then be discovered by a few more folks?

Sure.

But I firmly believe that in the two years that I haven’t checked Twitter (or Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn), I’ve become a better person.

When you’re not spending multiple hours per day scrolling, you’ve gotta find something else to do. I’ve gone on walks, ran up mountains, hosted many Zoom calls with amazing people. Written more newsletters.

I believe those ideas are better than the ideas that come from staring at my phone for 4+ hours a day.

If your a musician, you could write better songs. A painter, make better paintings. A photographer, make better photos.

It’s building the audience before you’ve fully built who you were to become. If I went viral two years ago, it would have broke me. Today, though, I feel more sure in what I’m working on than ever before.

 

A question I got via my Email Guidance offering:

Q. I saw you’ve been posting casual stuff (on Substack Notes) and I’m curious how you… justify that against an anti-social media ethos? That sounds like an argumentative question but I mean it in earnest!

A. If I post on other social media platforms, I need to get people from those services over to Substack in order to subscribe to my newsletter. With the casual energy I expend on Substack Notes, I get maximum value in return – as in, it’s just one or two clicks from gaining an email subscribers.

Substack is a tool that I use for now. Someday that will change. But for now, today, I can swap my time and energy “engaging” there because I know I can replenish that energy by building my email list.

Am I playing the game? Absolutely. But I am guarding my energy. I don’t rely on Substack Notes to “get the word out.” I am writing the answer to this question on my own website first, before I put it on Substack Notes (if I even do at all).

I am playing the game on my terms.

Inspired by Lindsey Adler’s recent Note, I decided that on Monday’s Escape Pod Zoom call we’d go around the room and each of us would read aloud for one minute.

Someone read their first Substack post. Someone else read old journal entries their daughter wrote at age nine. An inspirational quote and a paragraph from “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rilke. Excerpts from “Hysterical Blindness and other Southern Tragedies that Have Plagued My Life Thus Far” by Leslie Jordan. A paragraph from the Combahee River Collective Statement.

I read dialogue between two civilians signing up to run a cantina from “Death Star.”

Over the last several months, we’ve built enough connection that this activity didn’t break us. No one logged off.

And while I’m pretty sure this didn’t help anyone “quit instagram,” this was a small act of performance. This was curation. This was taking and giving of ourselves.

And the mere act of sitting there and listening to a person read? This wasn’t a YouTube video or podcast, but a Monday morning group of misfits simply reading to one another.

Not everything needs to be useful, but all of this has purpose.

How do you get more subscribers? Pitch yourself. Get awareness off your plate and go do fun stuff with other people.

Jason Mantzoukas loved the UK show Taskmaster so much he pitched himself to be on the show.

Everyone should just know how hilarious Jason Mantzoukas is, right? Instead of sitting around and hoping to picked to be on the show, he reached out. He put the ball in motion.

Jason could have posted every day on social media hoping that the executive producers would see how serious he was. Or, he could tell his manager. Send some emails. Get things into motion. We can do the same.

This is a recording of a Substack Live I did on Sunday, July 6, 2025, edited down a bit. This is mostly based off a piece from Pixel Envy called “Pressure on Substack.”

“(Substack) is still another platform hosted elsewhere. It simplifies the process for writers, podcasters, video creators, and others to publish their work for money. But their stuff is still made available at the mercy of software they do not control…”

I talk about my buddy Tom who is my “WordPress guy.” He runs I Heart Blank, so get in touch with him if you need WordPress installed with reliable hosting, and maybe some set up help. He’s solid.

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