Category: CommunityCategory: Community

I’m no sales expert, but I’ve watched enough YouTube videos to know about “scripts.” Literally planned out lines of dialogue to making the sale in person or on the phone. Teams will even review calls from during the week, just to make adjustments and get better.

With most things, there are extremes.

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Great insight from Carly Valancy and her work with author Laura Rubin.

Sometimes you’re too close to the thing to see the opportunities that are right under your nose. Halfway through this experiment, Laura realized her best friend didn’t event know what her book was about. You cannot expect someone to help you if you don’t let them in.

Sometimes the first step isn’t reaching out to strangers. It’s just sharing with the people who already love you and giving them the chance to help.

We often think we’re communicating our ideas and offers clearly, but there’s a possibility that those in our immediate network might not fully understand what you’re trying to get across. We take it for granted that they get it, when they might not. And if that’s the case, how might it resonate with total strangers?

From Cecilie Maria Nielsen, one of our two special guests from last week’s Escape Pod video call.

“One thing I think is true for all of us — and it doesn’t have to be a choir, it’s any kind of group version of your art form of choice — what does that look like if you do it together with a group? Is there a way you can facilitate it?”

Social media has it’s own way of isolating us; the allure of the lone-creator going viral is very real. But maybe the journey is better with others?

What could our creative endeavors look like if we did them together?

Nikki Lerner, one of our two special guests from a recent Escape Pod video call:

“If we’re honest, as creatives, sometimes we got a closet with a door, full of things that we never moved on. And we never moved on them, not because we had discernment, but because we couldn’t move from self to service.

And now it’s all stuck in the closet behind the door. You know it’s there, right? And somebody’s like, anybody got a rice maker? And you’re like, nope, I don’t got nothing. But you got six rice makers in the closet. You know what I’m saying? Because you’re hoarding it. Let’s not hoard our gifts.”

Imagine if moving from self to service opened up a whole new world for others, and not just your own work?

I attended one of Nikki’s choir performances, and the room was filled with friends and family of those singing. Nikki moved from self to service by organizing this event, and by doing so helped others to not hoard their gifts.

Yancey Strickler posted on Twitter. His idea went semi-viral, and then the trolls chimed in.

“Scale doesn’t just amplify the signal you want. It hands a megaphone to everyone else too. My presence on public channels gave strangers the license to try to wreck my work and ego for sport.”

The idea of “getting word out” sounds so pure and good, but sometimes enduring the negative effects make it not worth the trouble.

I don’t walk into marketing meetings and tell people social media is stupid.
I don’t want to “win a debate.”
My ideals don’t require a dissertation defense.

This is why I rarely post on Substack Notes anymore, as suddenly I’m required to defend any statement and make accommodations for any angle I didn’t address in my original post.

I’d rather write a newsletter to people who subscribed to it.
I’d rather write a blog for people who bother to visit.
I’d rather present ideas with my member community.

These are my safe spaces. Life is hard enough, I’d rather not turn Social Media Escape Club into a hard-mode fighting game. I’m allowed to seek comfort and quiet, and so are you.

As Yancey says:

“What I’m left with: a desire to unscale. To be in spaces where ideas can be heard and developed without the rage brigades trying to inflict pain just to feel something. We’ve been taught to see scale as the whole point of being online — a delusional VC logic we’ve accepted as the cost of participation. We shouldn’t. Our attention and energy are too scarce for it.”

I save time and energy by not being on the social media platforms, by not having comments on this blog. I might lose in the “reaching new people” game, but I’d rather keep my sanity as a daily win.